Getting married these days is very costly. For brides, before you buy from suppliers of your choice or hire the most costly services of makeup artists, wedding coordinators, coutourier, etc, talk to your husband-to-be first and discuss your budget. Before you go bridezilla by demanding this and that for your wedding, determine who pays for your wedding and will cover the largest percentage of your wedding budget. This will serve as a guide for couples who would like to know the basic etiquette in who pays for what.



There has been a huge evolution in Wedding Etiquette on who pays for the weddings in the last century. Traditional wedding etiquette dictated that the bride's father should pay for the wedding. Of course, this was during the time when girls were kept inside their house by their fathers and not allowed to get a job or go to school, but do household chores and learn manner lessons and social etiquette and wedding etiquette in preparation for their role as a married woman.

A daughter was 'given' out by her father to a boy or a man who his father thought could feed or fend his daughter when he was gone. And since he would be giving his daughter away, he would host his daughter's wedding and pay for everything as a sign of his agreement to his daughter's marriage. This is the traditional wedding etiquette on who pays for the wedding.

Wedding etiquette is much less rigid now on who pays for the wedding. The bride can go traditional, and ask the father of the bride to host the wedding and pay for the entire wedding expenses. The parents of the groom may also expressed their desire to co-host the wedding event This is especially appropriate when the groom's parents wealthy and are able to cover some of the expenses.

Most couples these days are both working and earning their own money. It is not a violation of wedding etiquette if they decide to take the expense of the wedding. In fact, many couples actually prefer to pay for the their own wedding. It gives them more control over all of the details. Often, traditional wedding etiquette is being set aside so that the couple and their family are able to choose for themselves.

Due to increasing costs, paying the entire share of the wedding may be beyond the means of either set of parents. For this reason, if both the bride and groom have jobs, they will most likely want to pay for the entire expenses for their wedding event.

However, there may be parents who would like to contribute to the wedding cost. Brides and grooms should be sensitive with this matter. Don't say no to your parents even if you think they will hand to you everything that they have. It is their joy to see you get married and their pleasure to play a big part of your wedding (that is by shelling out money for the wedding cost).

One reasonable alternative is to sit down and discuss the wedding plans with your parents. Talk about the probable cost of your plans and see what they feel comfortable paying for. By doing this, the parents will know exactly how much they will have to pay and you will also know how much you need to provide.