<p>I would point out that not all grooms WANT a say. It is not outlandish for a groom to be fine with showing up at the appointed place at the appointed time and wearing the correct outfit.</p>
<p>^^^ That’s my H and we’ve been married 36 years. It also describes my son…and may I say his GF (and perhaps future bride)is very lucky.</p>
<p>IT is humerous and scary how spineless some of the grooms and parents in some of these stories are. I guess I have a different, and at times radical viewpoint because I wasn 't brought up with similar values , not sure if that is the right word. LEvel of accommodation depends on how much I like you or how important you are perceived to be sometimes feelings become hurt because people overestimated that. I cant believe the amount non wealthy people spend on this because the other side" demanded it " and they were to spineless to say no . IF I get married and have a wedding and the groom doesnt care about details of the wedding thats one thing but if he is afraid of his mommy or my mommy (wouldnt get involved so just theory) i would be extremily off put by that… offering to pay will get you no where because I cant be bought out for that sort if thing.</p>
<p>This is such a good thread, to help me sort out what to do when the time comes. I wonder if any of you have experience with marriages you did not support. My S nearly married a girl who turned out to have significant drug/mental health issues. Really don’t know what I would have offered them, and am thankful it never came to that.</p>
<p>Hypothetically speaking, I expect I will pay for my D’s wedding someday, although I would love to host a small event and help with a down payment on a house. I guess for my S, I will play it by ear, but would expect to contribute something. </p>
<p>Now that my nest is empty, I think I’d enjoy doing some planning.</p>
<p>My H and I were a bit older (30 and 31) when we got married. We weren’t making much; we were residents working long hours for peanuts, but we wanted to pay for our wedding, partly so we could dictate some things, like where it was-- in Cincinnati, where we were working, instead of in either of our hometowns. And we just felt like because we were older, it should be partly our own responsibility. So we moonlighted like crazy in area ERs for a year. My dad gave us a generous cash gift and H’s parents gave us a lovely rehearsal dinner. I think we enjoyed it a little more, knowing how hard we’d worked for it.</p>
<p>^^^^ “like”</p>
<p>"IT is humerous and scary how spineless some of the grooms and parents in some of these stories are. "</p>
<p>Does not sound like you are marriage material if you have this attitude. It is a lot of compromises people make starting with or long before wedding.</p>
<p>Wedding planning is like childbirth . . . it is popular for the male party to be involved now, but that role is overrated. If both parties want that, fine, have at it - but there’s no shame in admitting that in your particular case it is the province of “the womenfolk”.</p>
<p>If my hypothetical groom said the entire thing was the province of the womenfolk, I probably wouldn’t be marrying him, since I think it should be about the two of us. That wouldn’t mesh with my values since it wouldn’t indicate that he cared all that much about me or the marriage, really (what if I didn’t want all the planning dumped on me?) I don’t mean to be insulting to anyone, but I think a wedding is more about a partnership than some dream that I’ve had since I was six.</p>
<p>But then again, I would not marry someone who thought that being involved with childbirth was overrated.</p>
<p>When something needs to get done, often it is more efficient to have one person doing it. I don’t find that many things in life which is life or death. Through out 30 years of our marriage (our anniversary today), we always figured out what’s more important to the other person and who is better at doing it, and we let that person be in charge.</p>
<p>I am much better with finance, so I take care of the money matters. H is very good with decorating (great sense of color), so I tend to keep my opinion to myself and he gets to have the house look the way he wants. I liked taking care of the girls when they were growing up, so he took care of the cooking. Both of us like to travel, and we choose where we want to go, but I plan the logistic (he just shows up) and he gets to choose the restaurants. At Christmas time, H takes care of the tree and house decoration, and I am responsible for presents - his parents, my parents, kids, friends.</p>
<p>As a couple, we don’t feel like everything needs to be talked to death, everyone needs to be consulted and considered. We split up our work and everyone is involved in different ways. I feel the same about wedding planning. If I am doing it, let me do it and it would be beautiful. If someone else wants to do it, I am happy to be a guest and do something else myself if my kid wants it.</p>
<p>Right now, i dont know how I feel about hosting my only daughter’s wedding, when the time comes. We just spent a fortune on her education, neglecting our own retirement and other necessary expenses. We will have an education loan to pay off, but thats not an issue, that will be more manageable than the education and living expenses we just doled out over the past 4 yrs. While my parents paid for my reception, H and I paid for all other expenses, including paying for some of my bridesmaids expenses and our rehearsal dinner.
D is in a serious relationship now, but we just dont have the money to pay for a wedding. One good thing is, my daughter is so non traditional, a large formal wedding is not her style. She would be more inclined to throw a costume party or rave than the trappings of a large wedding.</p>
<p>Oldfort: happy anniversary. I’m with you on one person planning. BUT… it turned out that for my daughter’s wedding I needed to team up with her. It was a challenge for both of us, but we got through it somehow. If it hadn’t been at our house, I think I would have just told her the budget and the number of people we were inviting and then stepped out entirely.</p>
<p>What I have learned from this thread is that views on weddings vary widely. I am traditional. I expect to plan and pay for my daughter’s wedding. I expect the groom’s family to plan and pay for the rehearsal dinner. (If they can’t or won’t do this, we will take care of it.) As the hosts, we make all of the final decisions. Does this mean we are not considerate of guests with special needs? No, of course not. </p>
<p>Is this way of thinking right or wrong? Neither. My daughter and I have talked about her wedding over the years and we are on the same page. What happens if she meets “the one” and changes her mind? Then we will have to change directions because I want her to be happy. You might ask, “What about the groom? What about his opinions?” Well, it is up to them to work that out between them and then come to the table with their plans.</p>
<p>Now, I still need more information on the questions from my original post. Maybe you are like me and haven’t reached that milestone in your life. I haven’t been to more than two or three weddings in the last ten years. I expect that in the next five years they will come in waves. So, to refresh your memory, here are my questions:</p>
<p>What did you do to prepare financially? Did you enjoy the process of planning things with your daughter (or son)? How was wedding dress shopping? Was it difficult making the guest list? Do you have any tips to share? Funny stories?</p>
<p>This thread is meant to be fun. It is not intended to be a debate about spending money for weddings.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I understand you want the thread to be fun … but your separation of these two paragraphs often does not work out. For me the creation of the guest list was not fun as my Mom and I had to work through differing expectations of how my wedding was to be run. Similarly planning for the finances will be less than fun if the two families have very different ideas of how much should be spent and how it is financed.</p>
<p>Frankly, that is the concern I have about the one wedding one planner idea. When it comes to picking the napkins I’m all in … when it comes to telling the other family they need to pay $50,000 or that they can invite a radically different number than they expected then I’m not so sure the wedding planning will turn out to be “fun” in the one planner model. Personally, I believe if all the parties can be involved from the start and an agreement can be reached about the overall plan for the wedding THEN planning the details can be fun. In our case after we got my Mom on board about the short list of invites for her family than it was fun (and she had A LOT of fun planning the summer picnic/reception we had for her full family (our compromise solution))</p>
<p>3togo, I guess I goofed with my wording. I meant that posters should take this thread as something interesting to discuss, not as an opportunity to debate the point of spending money on a wedding. It was my attempt to keep things focused on my questions, rather than <em>if</em> you should be spending that amount of money on a wedding. </p>
<p>I realize that some of these issues are not fun. I recall a situation my friend had many years ago. Her parents were paying for the wedding. The groom’s family had a huge guest list, largely due to the number of business acquaintances the father was inviting. It was very sticky. I can’t remember how it all worked out, but I wonder how people deal with that today. Do you say, “You can invite x number of guests?” What if they have a very large family? Just wondering.</p>
<p>P.S. I guess I was hoping <em>some</em> of this stuff would be fun or would bring back good memories. :)</p>
<p>Not wanting to hijack the thread, I will respond to this then let it go . . .
eireann, I did not say that DH and the father of our 2 kids was unwilling to be involved. However, in my experience the idea that the dad necessarily will be a big help rubbing one’s back with tennis balls and coaching one’s breathing isn’t necessarily true. With #1 I wanted him there and we both thought he would be the “modern dad” and actively involved. As it turned out, I wanted him there but to sit in the corner and be quiet which he did admirable for 11 hours of labor. With #2 I was perfectly fine with him waiting down the hall until the big moment and so was he. Neither of us felt that he needed to prove anything by telling me when to breathe or viewing the placenta afterward. Besides, I had my sister and a doula there.</p>
<p>Getting the guest list of relatives from his side of family was the extent of H’s planning from what I remember. I made our invitations ( & since this was in 1981 it didn’t include iPhoto)
we decided on having our wedding in a public garden and didn’t do anything to the space besides having folding chairs for guests. [Photo of Azalea Way With Blooming Azaleas and Such, Early June](<a href=“Panoramio is no longer available”>Panoramio is no longer available)</p>
<p>H & I were young (23 & 26) but had been living together for a few years, so we didn’t expect our parents to pay for it. H’s father did offer to pay for the rehearsal dinner, but as his family disliked me ( his mother had tried to talk me out of marrying him), I really wasn’t in the mood for a showdown before the wedding so I passed on the dinner. ( & the rehearsal)</p>
<p>We did each prepare something to read at the ceremony, and we went together to pick out our rings,although I happened to find a dress on sale at the local department store. ( it was 1981- so my dress was Jessica McClintock by Gunne Sax ;)) It wasn’t my usual style, and it certainly wasn’t glamorous, but I was so young anything would have been pretty. 
Too bad JCrew wasn’t around then.
( men really have it much easier! H had a very nice grey morning coat, as it was late morning)</p>
<p>Wishing oldfort a happy anniversary!</p>
<p>About financial planning - we always had a number in mind, which came out of our general savings. But we didn’t hand our d a check in that amount - we paid as we went. She’d tell us when a deposit was due for the location and caterer, then let us know when the balance was due, and we paid the vendors directly. Our d had a spreadsheet that kept track of all expenses. She paid the other vendors, and then the week of the wedding we wrote her the check for the balance between what we had paid and what we promised.</p>
<p>Going off topic on CC. Who would have thought…</p>
<p>I’m hoping for a destination wedding. One thing I’ve noticed from my friends having kids getting married is that the parent’s friends are not necessarily invited like they were when I got married. My MIL was aghast that we wouldn’t invite their friends. I had a nice wedding but it was not the one I wanted. I won’t do that to my children.</p>
<p>I know this is VERY unpopular on CC but we don’t plan on paying for our kids weddings. They are debt free from college, both have great jobs and they are very aware of this. We must prepare for our retirement and we are paying their Stafford loans. My parents and my IL’s paid $500 each for our wedding expenses, we paid for everything else. I’m sure there will be things we will contribute to but unless our kids want to support us in our old age, they will pay for their own weddings.</p>
<p>I have no idea why I am replying to this thread but it seems like an interesting debate.</p>
<p>As someone who has been to quite a few weddings since moving here to the city, if there’s anything I know, it’s that, empirically, trying to be too much of an accommodator is asking for some major drama. It’s very easily prone to a snowball effect where suddenly a large number of people are throwing in requests – and it just becomes a stressful clusterbomb since you really <em>can’t</em> please everyone fully.</p>
<p>This is of course just my opinion, but a wedding is a special day for the people actually getting married, and I feel it should all be up to their discretion. I don’t see it as much different from, say, a party. If someone’s going to complain about the venue/food/surroundings/people being invited, then they’re not obligated to attend. </p>
<p>My girlfriend is Asian (I am white) – both of us 2009 graduates – and while she and her mother grew up here in the States and aren’t “traditional,” many of their relatives are. We probably won’t consider marriage for a couple of years but we’ve certainly talked about how we’d handle it, and we agree on most points. It’s important to make a good-faith effort to make decisions that will have decent mass-appeal (e.g. a variety of good food, etc), but that’s really where we’d draw the line. Even though my girlfriend and I would be the ones paying for everything, that actually has very little to do with why we hold this opinion.</p>
<p>If someone contacted us with a concern, we’d try to accommodate it if it were sufficiently easy to deal with and reasonable in scope, sure. But you have to hold your ground somewhere. With every wedding I’ve attended so far, I’ve gone because I care about the people involved. I’d be imposing by trying to overlay my own selfish whims onto their special days – instead I’m going to respect whatever decisions they make and be an accommodating guest. I would hope that others treat me the same way in return.</p>