Who Pays?!

Believe it or not, a simple civil wedding ceremony can cost less than fifty pounds, yet the average cost of a wedding in the UK today is said to be between fifteen and twenty thousand pounds! So who is expected to pay for what? Well, there is no magic formula but things have certainly moved on since the days when a Bride's family were expected to foot the majority of the bill.


Mrs2Be has conducted fairly extensive research into this over recent years and we have found that despite wedding etiquette proclaiming that it is the responsibility of the Bride's Father to foot the majority of the bill, it really does fluctuate quite dramatically from couple to couple. These days, it is more common for both sets of parents to chip in and for the Bride and Groom themselves to contribute. In fact we have found that in a lot of cases, the Bride and Groom actually pay for a bigger chunk of the wedding than anyone and in some cases prefer to foot the entire bill themselves!


If this doesn't appeal to you then decide how to approach this with your parents. If they are aware of this shift in balance you probably already know about it and you might even have been lucky enough for them to bring the subject up and offer a sum of money already. If not however, the advice that we and the Brides in our research give is simply to approach the subject sooner rather than later. This also avoids uneasy conversations later down the line, especially if you have gone ahead and incorrectly assumed one way or the other.


Getting a clear idea of who will pay for what upfront should help you to avoid finding yourself unable to pay for something that you booked in the hope that one set of parents or other would one day hand you some cash! Who knows, you may even find when you ask that you are better off than you thought. One word of warning however, we do know of one bride whose parents offered to foot the bill, however she chose not to divulge this to her Hubby to be and chose instead to allow both him and his parents to plough money in to the pot and to SPEND the cash that she was given from her parents on a few too shopping sprees!!!!. Needless to say, this ended in complete disaster and so it should have!


Happy Planning! x