Basically I’m asking about events like birthdays or bachelor parties where you go out and celebrate, but where the guests themselves seem to be expected to pay. I was inspired from this post in the moving thread:
It’s relatively common in a lot of places to treat the birthday person. At the same time, past a certain age it seems kind of tacky to throw yourself a birthday party/event, invite people, and then just expect them to pay for you. If your friends invite you out that’s one thing, but arranging to go have drinks and then hoping people will buy them for you seems kind of cheap.
I know with bridal or baby showers, that’s pretty much why a friend has to throw it for you lest it look like poor form.
I think it’s the same with birthday and bachelor parties: it’s supposed to be your Best Man/Maid of Honor who throws your bachelor party.
As far as birthday parties, most of the time, IME, it’s not something that is hosted, there’s just an informal custom that each birthday results in a trip out. The birthday person might be asked to pick the location, but that’s not the same as throwing a party. At most, it’s a Facebook message saying “Hey, everyone, drinks tonight at so and so, it’s my birthday!”. That’s not being a host. Once you are there, it’s nice to help pay for the birthday person.
I admit, if I got a formal invite to a birthday dinner from the person having the birthday, I’d assume they were paying for it, and I’d be a little taken aback if that weren’t the case. If the invitation came from a friend and they made it really clear in the invite that it was “pay your own way”, I’d be fine with that, and expect to chip in toward the birthday-having person’s tab (but I’d consider it ultimately the host’s responsibility to pay for the birthday person).
In my group, we cover our own tabs. “Paying everyone’s tab for your birthday” kind of went out when we stopped going to the skating rink/chuck e cheese/arcade/etc for our birthdays and started making our own cash.
Last year, we went out to an expensive sushi restaurant and a dive bar afterward. I assumed that anyone who didn’t want to spend the cash just didn’t come. No one thought it in poor form because that’s just how we do it, I guess.
That’s how we do it in my circle of friends. Birthday person picks the place with suggestions from others and once we get there, it’s kind of accepted that everyone will add a few dollars to cover the birthday person’s tab. But nobody in my group is a big drinker and the stuff on the bill usually includes appetizers and other food that was shared, so it’s not like we’re covering someone’s $40 entree.
Yeah, it does seem like something you associate with younger people. I can’t imagine a bunch of people in their thirties or forties assuming people will be paying for them…
I don’t think you should ever assume someone is going to pay for anything. Anything with a formal invite should be paid by the host, though. Anything along the lines of “let’s meet up for drinks” is every-man-for-himself, but if you want to pay for something to be nice, that’s fine.
When I had my Bachelor party, my Best Man paid for most of it (paintball, booze, strip club) for me. Other groomsmen chipped in to pay for drinks to get me as drunk as possible Everybody there (including my moochy brother, surprisingly) paid their own way. Some people couldn’t afford some parts, so they declined the invitation, ie skipped paintball, went to the bar had a few drinks, passed on strip club.
My best friend has this tendency to pay for everybody, and what I realized over a long time is that it attracts moochers. He would get a lot of attention and ‘friends’, but it seems like they were more happy with a free meal than anything. I myself have been trying to move away from that because while you do feel generous about it sometimes, people just take advantage of it.
My fiancee’s [more mature] circle of friends always pay individually. They always bring cash so that no matter where they are everybody can pay their share. They might all chip in for the birthday girl/bachelorette, but never expect anyone else to pay for them. If they cant afford to go out for drinks and stuff, they graciously decline the invitation.
Everybody there (including my moochy brother, surprisingly) paid their own way. Some people couldn’t afford some parts, so they declined the invitation, ie skipped paintball, went to the bar had a few drinks, passed on strip club.