I don’t think it is good for my kids to get everything handed to them financially, especially once they have the basic education needed to support themselves and are in their 20s. My kids have always known that the expectation is that they will support themselves for the most part after their undergrad degree is done. Grad school is on them if they want to go. I will contribute to their wedding, but feel no obligation to cover the whole cost of a fancy shindig. And I certainly will not be buying them a house.
An undergrad education at a good institution and the expectation that they will not need to financially support me In my old age are enough. It is ridiculous to beat yourself up and risk your own retirement status over providing other financial support.
I think it is important once kids are out of undergrad to require kids to grow up, and make the career, job, and housing choices that in the long run will help them provide for themselves and their own families. It is the next step in their education, IMHO. I don’t think it does our kids any favors to keep trying to solve their financial problems through their 20s and even early 30s.
Mcat, if you are going to retire, you can say to your son, this is my retirement budget. I’m planning to use this phrase more often when I retire. I’ve already told my kid not to mooch off me, well not so much, when I retire.
It wouldn’t be “financial support” though. It would be a gift given freely. And what if I’m not needing to “beat myself up and risk my own retirement status”?
This is an imperfect analogy, but I know families where the grandparents might pay to take their grown adult children, spouses and grandchildren on a luxury vacation. That’s not how my particular family rolls, but for families where they do, and all have a good time – I don’t see the grandparents as “providing financial support.” They’re providing a generous gift. To me, financial support would be paying for things on an ongoing basis – rent / mortgage, utilities, necessities like food, things of that nature.
I don’t think paying for our kid’s wedding is solving their financial problem. I see it as one last thing I do for my kids before they start their own family. I have parties to mark my kid’s milestones in life, and getting married is certainly one of the biggest events. I have no doubt they would throw parties for me when I get older too.
You frequently discuss the cultures of your son…and his GF. FIRST…let them get engaged. That hasn’t happened yet.
Then let them decide what kind of wedding they would like. Go from there.
I view the wedding as the last “party” I will throw with my kids before they have their own families. I’ll do the best I can to make it a nice event.
Re the guest list. We will work together to determine this. I have lots of good friends who have known my kids, and continue to interact with them. If I want to invite them…and this exceeds the guest total, I will contribute more.
For DD, while I hope the couple and the groom’s family will contribute something, this is not my expectation. But I’m pretty sure the groom’s family will want to do something to help out.
But all this wedding “planning” discussion will take place once the couple starts thinking about dates…and that hasn’t happened and likely won’t for a while.
Instead of the wedding being “the last party” the parents throw for a child, wouldn’t it be healthier for the child and fiancee to think of it as “their wedding”, that they’re planning together? (And asking mon & dad during the planning if they’re able to contribute anything.)
I agree with @Pizzagirl and @oldfort in that I don’t consider contributing to the cost of a wedding as financial support. Both of my kids knew that once they had their final graduation, they had to support themselves and they have. In fact, D2 graduated college at age 20 and has supported herself from that very day and in NYC no less. Contributing to or paying for a wedding is a gift. My parents gave me my wedding. It is a cultural tradition of sorts. My kids don’t depend on me financially. They did not ask for money for a wedding. But it is a gift I have always intended to give. I don’t support them financially. I did pay (and still am paying off) their educations. My parents did that for me too. I’m paying it forward. It is a value and a gift I wanted to bestow on my kids.
I am not one who believes in financially supporting adult children once they are out of school. Do I give gifts? Yes, such as contributions to their wedding. Birthday presents. Holiday presents. I even offer from time to time to get them some clothes because it gives me pleasure and they don’t count on it or ask for it. They even ask me “are you sure?? you don’t have to do that!” (this happened a few days ago when I offered to get D2 a new dress and shoes as she has some weddings to attend. She never asked for a thing. She pays all her own expenses. As an adult, my parents treated me to things too. Someone else mentioned family trips…yes, that happened several times in my family when my parents were still alive. My parents also gave us some money toward a downpayment on our first home. They gave my husband money to start his first business long ago. My parents gave my kids money toward college tuition. I don’t see gift giving the same way as financially supporting someone on an ongoing basis instead of them doing so themselves. I think it is a tradition in many cultures or families for parents to pay for some or all of a wedding for their kids, even kids who otherwise financially support themselves, but may not have the means to pay for even a more modest wedding (which isn’t so cheap these days).
Your choice. If you want to view the wedding as the first party the new couple throws for themselves…that’s fine. And clearly, from this thread, many folks agree with you.
We are choosing to look at it the other way…the last big event we will HELP throw.
I agree it is a choice, but that choice is up to the couple getting married, and not us parents.
Sure I’d love to be involved with helping to finance and even plan a S or D’s wedding. But I recognize it’s more important for them to learn how to build their own life together without my (parental) interference.
I respect this is what works for me, and maybe not for others.
My kids are PLANNING their own weddings. They share and tell me stuff but they are doing ALL the work themselves of putting it together and making decisions. And they did not ASK me to contribute. I offered to.
I don’t see one way as more healthy than the next. Do what feels right for your family.
It appears to me several CCers posted something similar to what soozievt just did.
I also agree that parents, if willing to do this, do only whatever they can. Looking at this from another point view, “participating (financially or not) the wedding event” is an opportunity for the new in-laws to officially welcome the DIL/SIL into their family (in the “extended family” sense only.) Many posts above seem to agree that this is a good tradition if you can afford it. Of course, if the parents are too old/too sick/too poor, they may not be able to do so. This is perfectly fine as well.
BTW, regarding the color coding, I was just playing with my newly picked-up trick. It was fun to play with this HTML-like stuff. It reminds me of my early days when the Internet and browsers became popular, and people would pick up some “teach your self HTML” booklet, and learn a few things here and there.
I will stop doing this if this is indeed too distracting. But somehow I personally do not like using the quote as simple as: re:" ", which was what we old-timers used to do when we used an early text-based emailer like “elm” on Unix.
Any one here grew up with a command line interface emailer on the old Unix System? I did. And this kind of non-GUI user interface hardly died out completely at workplace. I visited the “fruit company” a couple of years back and noticed that their engineers almost relied on the old-school command line interface (even on a GUI-centric Mac) for their daily work.
Just a few days ago, I heard a young engineer commented/complained that this command line interface seems to be unfriendly, borderline intimidating to him - but this was all we old-timers used to have. There is a generation gap here.
I think the extent that the OP is wanting to help is unhealthy. If I am not wrong, he is already paying for med school. And wishes he could help buy a house. And throw a wedding that is unaffordable. Even if I had Trump type money, I probably wouldn’t be doing that because I think it delays self sufficiency in young adults. I don’t see a problem contributing what you can afford to the wedding, but the OP can’t afford it. If I remember right from the past, the OP and his son aren’t very close, as the son has chosen. This type of obsession might be part of the issue.
@intparent I don’t know the OP or his situation. However, for some people, including myself, certain things are a family tradition or value. I don’t see that as delaying self sufficiency in young adults. I consider my young adult children to be VERY self sufficient. They have never lived at home since high school, not even for a summer. They supported themselves every summer during their college (or grad school) years doing work in their respective fields away from their home state. They have fully supported themselves since they obtained their final degree. They never moved home. They were not subsidized for rent or any living expenses.
However, in my family, my college and graduate school education and my wedding were paid for by my parents. This is a very strong desire on my part to do this for my children, even if it is a financial challenge to do so. Education and weddings are something in my family’s culture that are given to the kids. But the kids are expected to support themselves otherwise.
As long as they don’t end up supporting you in your old age because you blew your retirement savings on a one day party, do what you want with your money. But posters who complain that they can’t actually afford it but want to stick with the tradition because their parents did it need to remember that our parents paid a ton less for our college educations and many of them have more stable sources of retirement income (pensions, for example) than we will have.
This is an interesting thread. I find it fascinating that so many people have given this thought. I asked dh last night what his thoughts were on the subject, and he said, “I don’t know. I thought the girl’s family paid for everything.”
I am relatively introvert so I do not talk much to almost anybody in my real life. This does not mean that our family members are not emotionally close to each others. For example, when I am not at work, it is always us three going out together. We arranged our son’s EC activities on Saturday, and I have almost never missed his Saturday EC activities for 12+ years.
However, I admit that our son is indeed much closer to my wife, who has been a SAHM her whole life. Her parenting skill is also much better than mine. I am just a more “boring” person. At one time, DS was staying in a hotel and had a hard time to sleep. He would even call us just because he was awake in such an instance. When he was still being awake, he joked: “Get daddy on the line and by talking to him, I could get into sleep very fast.” Indeed, I made him sleepy very quickly, likely talking to him about some random finance related topic (maybe IRA/401K? My college-age son had zero interest in it.)
