Wondered if folk would share their experiences/expectations about parents of the groom contributing to a wedding or giving gifts.
My only prior experience was when my daughter got married, and we paid the entirety of the reception. The in-laws paid for a modest rehearsal dinner. It kinda bugged us because at points they made noises as tho they were going to pay for this or that - like the bar bill - but they never got around to whipping out the plastic…
We intend to give the couple what we consider a pretty generous check. We have no idea how the reception is being paid for, and have played no role in the plans (other than to give a small list of “must-invites.”) Nor do we WANT any role in planning it (other than logistics as we are travelling.)
I think the in-laws are well-off enough, but my kid hasn’t said whether they are paying for things, or whether the couple is footing the bill. I know at some point, we told them we would give them a sizeable cash gift, but since then, they haven’t asked for anything, and we haven’t offered.
I understand the groom’s family traditionally pays for the rehearsal dinner, but I don’t want to agree to some open-ended commitment. Happy to host the immediate family and wedding party at an appropriate venue, but don’t want an unlimited guest list at a 4-star restaurant.
PLEASE DO NOT INTERPRET ANY OF THIS TO SUGGEST WE ARE ON ANYTHING LESS THAN EXCELLENT TERMS W/ OUR SON OR HIS FIANCE.
Just wondering if any of you have any thoughts about any aspect of this?
We’ll be seeing 2 of my kids and their SOs on a vacation in 2 weeks, so I imagine we’ll get a lot more information then.
That’s a lot of, ‘They haven’t asked’, and, ‘We haven’t mentioned it.’
Sheesh, it’s not subterfuge. And this is family.
Just have a conversation already. Be gentle but speak directly to what you wish to know. If you are casual and comfortable about it so will others be. A couple of quiet dialogues here and things would be set straight. This isn’t hard, you can do it!
Has this ever come up even hypothetically about who they think pays for what? If not, and they are now reading about how the groom’s family pays this and that, hopefully they will say something. I would leave it alone until they mention it. At that point, communicate what you feel comfortable covering.
Of course my parents told me decades ago that my wedding is my business and they would come if I invite them and it fits into their schedule. Paying for any of it wasn’t even in the picture.
When my older son got married, he and his wife paid for the whole modest affair. Her father was not wealthy but not poor either (he was a federal judge and, I assume, was about even with me). When my younger son got married, they had a huge bash, but my impression is that a lot of it was a form of advertising for his business (he owned a car dealership. I felt no obligation to help although I did pay for the rehearsal dinner. When my daughter married, I was prepared to pay for a modest wedding, but she and her husband paid. All three of them got checks for $5000 as wedding gifts though.
My parents paid for my brothers’ rehearsal dinner. We (being that I’m a team player!) put on the rehearsal dinner too, as in we rented the place, got the caterer, did the decorations, etc.
I do believe my parents paid for the bar at the wedding.
The rest was supposedly up to the bride’s dad, which is another story, but my parents right off agreed to pay for those two things. Since you’re not in the same town with them, not sure how much you can do about the actual throwing of the rehearsal dinner but of course it can just be a dinner with a menu, no “set up” required.
I second the advice to talk to your son and hist future wife about how you can help. The father of the groom often pays for the rehearsal dinner. That usually includes the wedding party, significant others, parents, and immediate family. Sometimes it includes everyone travelling from out of town or special other guests. Say who or how many people you are willing to host and at what type of restaurant, or name a specific restaurant. If you are flexible about who to host but you have a budget in mind, let them know and let them decide how they want to spend it. If you are willing to pay for the party and let them keep any extra budgeted money, tell them. There is no need to be so coy about what you are willing to do.
If you are willing to pitch in for the wedding too, tell your son. If he says his future in-laws are paying for it, you can offer to talk with them and extend them the same offer.
For what it’s worth, neither my wife’s nor my family contributed to our wedding expenses. My in-laws hosted our rehearsal dinner at their house but we paid for the catering. It was fairly casual and everyone had a great time.
Wedding gifts are usually in addition to helping with wedding expenses. My parents gave us a little money for our wedding but the bigger thing for me was that they traveled quite far to see us get married. My mother detests traveling and that was pretty close to the last time she left her house for any length of time. Her presence meant more to me than money.
Did you miss the part where I said we’d be spending a vacation with them in a couple of weeks, at which time we’d have plenty of time to discuss this?
IME, people get weird about $. We tend to be very open about it, but some people misinterpret that, or react in ways we did not expect. I was just asking for some strangers’ anonymous opinions, hoping it might be useful or interesting. (Plus, I was bored at work!) I had every expectation that SOMEONE would suggest this indicated some failing in my family relations!
With my daughter, we gave them $x, with the idea it could be for a party, or whatever else they wanted it for. This kid, we intend to give a similar check. I have no interest in offering to pay for a wedding in addition.
Yeah. Only thing kinda weird is if they need $ to reserve a venue or something. I assume the in-laws are paying. Would hope the young couple isn’t cashing in savings or anything, when they could have just asked us to give them their gift early.
But, I’m a pretty strong believer in, “If you want something, ask.” I don’t want to seem like I am butting in by asking about how they are handling things. Like I said, IME people can be weird about $. I don’t think my kid is and I hope his fiance isn’t, but I don’t want to offend the in-laws I’ve never met.
In a couple of weeks we’ll discuss it apres-ski in a hot-tub!
I think this is an awesome approach, provided you have the conversation with them about it far enough in advance to be useful to them if they want to use it for anything wedding-related. My in-laws did that, and it was an extremely generous gift, but they did it a week before the wedding. We paid for everything wedding-related wedding entirely by ourselves, which was just fine with me, but if we’d had any idea about the gift, we would have been less concerned about things like saving $50 by dropping off the rental linens ourselves rather than having the rental company pick them up. As it was, all monetary wedding gifts went into the down payment fund. I was extremely grateful for the timing in the sense that the money was never in the remotest way used as leverage over wedding planning decisions or anything else.
(My parents? Mom couldn’t afford to give significant $$, and Dad played all kinds of head games with me because I refused to invite two old friends of his, one of whom I hadn’t seen in many years. One of said friends had subpoenaed my mother to testify in a paternity suit when I was a kid, and the other, the last time I had an actual conversation with her maybe 15 years before, had spent it ranting about how “the illegals are ruining California.” Yeah, sorry, I just told Dad that we were only inviting people that we had actual relationships with. I think in the end he got us a couple of place settings of china. I think it surprised him that I refused his offer to pay for his friends’ reception dinners - it was never about the money anyway.)
I’m an about-to-be groom (in August), and I think that this all can only be answered in any meaningful way by talking with your son/daughter-in-law.
Find out if they have expectations. Identify what you’re comfortable with, both financially and emotionally. Figure out how those all square together.
It is a funny balancing act, and, at least for me, is made extra awkward because a lot of the spending feels (in part) like an inappropriate extravagance that I’m engaging in with other people’s money (and my own).
The long and short of it is, be open and direct about it, and don’t worry. Something like “we’re interested in contributing $x towards the wedding, which will include a rehearsal dinner. How does that sound?” . . . is a fine way to start the conversation. It’s also fine (in my opinion, but what do I know) to ask what her parents are doing. Not necessarily a dollar value, but just to get a sense of where the money is coming from. “Are the in-laws helping to pay for the event?”
Here’s what happened w/ my dtr, causing me to wonder about wedding expenses:
-We offered her $x towards the wedding.
-My wife did not wish to dictate how things were done, but thought that helping with some of the planning would be a fun thing to share w/ our dtr.
-My dtr disavowed any interest in making plans, and had her fiance make all the decisions. Which sorta transformed our gift from what we had expected.
-They wanted the invites to read that the couple invited their guests, or to list both parents as inviters. We demurred - thought our 5-figure gift entitled us to at least the ink on the invite. As soon as the in-laws ponied up, they could get listed. (Yeah, a bunch of you will call us controlling. And arguably a minor point. And I believe I had a thread on this years back. You are entitled to your opinions.)
-Fiance proceeded to spend 100% of our gift on the hall, dinner, food, leaving nothing for the cake, flowers, bar. Said they would have a cash bar. Sorry, but if I’m paying $10k+ for a party, my guests aren’t paying for their booze. In-laws made some sounds about paying for the bar, but never came up with the cash.
-So we increased our gift to pay for the bar, cake and flowers.
-SIL invited 70% of the guests. As a result, I didn’t invite a single of my friends.
Now it was a wonderful wedding and reception. But an expenditure of that size is not inconsequential. And IME many young people lack experience making expenditures that large. And we erred by failing to sit down with the in-laws to discuss finances.
I know we made mistakes before, and could have done many things better. That is one reason I may be overthinking things this time. I have no idea what - if anything - my dtr’s in-laws gave them. I do know they contributed $0 to the wedding.
This time around, I had hoped to just show up, be my usual pleasant self ;), and hand them a card with a nice check.
Like I said many a time, I assume much will be discussed before the end of the month…
The policy in my family has always been “brides’ family pays for the wedding, grooms’ family contributes something significant to help with life after the wedding.”
When my brother got married my parents helped him with a down payment on a house. When I got married, my wife’s family paid the wedding expenses, and my parents bought us a new refrigerator and range (we already owned a house).
Nothing wrong with any of that except that in light of those facts the cash was NOT a gift. It was payment for a wedding, perhaps, payment for having your names on the invite, perhaps, or to have certain people invited or to pay for a bar tab, but not a gift. Gifts are, by definition, given without expectation of anything in return. What you did would best be described as “designated funding” or, if not discussed in advance “implied designated funding”.
Again, there is absolutely nothing wrong in expecting something in return for your money, but as soon as you do it is not a gift.
My only concern, given the shenanigans that happened in your last go around, is that you are putting off your conversation too late. Given that you have clear expectations, you might want to have a clear discussion with your son now. “We’d like to contribute by being there, and contributing this cash amount for you to use as you see fit. Love ya kid.” If you feel like making it any more open ended than that, do so. If not, don’t. I suggest you do it soon, however, and send the check. You’ll avoid misunderstandings, and they can have that money to actually use.
You might also want to touch briefly on that pesky issue of how involved you were with his sister and how not involved you are with him. Yes, it’s traditional, but times are changing, and people’s feelings get hurt. His probably aren’t, but it wouldn’t hurt to take the extra sentence to just say “We did a lot for your sister, as is traditional. We assume your financée is managing this with her family. We’ve had our shot.” or something.
I get the sense that this all seems perfectly obvious to you, but getting it out of the way now might make things much easier on you when you are there.
Fair enough - but I think you position strikes me as somewhat extreme. Might there be additional categories of gifts with “strings.”
-What about a gift for a specific purpose - say cash to buy a car. Is that not a gift?
-What if I give someone a car, but ask that they use it to drive their grandma to the store once a week?
-Or even in my description of our contribution to our daughter’s wedding. I would agree that there were some conditions/expectations related to the gift, but I would disagree with your saying that it is not a “gift.”
-What if I sell you something valuable, for well under market value, or on very favorable terms?
Minor quibble, but if not “gift”, what word would you use? I think not all gifts are necessarily entirely altruistic.
If your wife expected to get to plan some things with her daughter in exchange for the money, your wife should have said that to her. Your wife should have just assumed everything was going to work out how she dreamed.
Since I’m entitled to my opinion, I’ll say this seems a little petty. It’s not really a gift if what you really wanted was promotion for your generosity. It was thoughtful for your daughter and her husband to want to acknowledge both families on the invitation. For what it’s worth, my wife and I gave my in-laws credit for hosting the rehearsal dinner (which they did at their house) and both my parents and my in-laws on the wedding invitation even though we paid for everything ourselves. We didn’t think of our wedding invitations as advertising for who paid the most. Reading the invitation that way seems a bit gauche.
So let’s see. Not only was your daughter supposed to give you advertising on the invitation, she was also supposed to invite your guests to your party and your son-in-law was supposed to spend the money you gave them on the things you wanted. But you didn’t want to dictate how things were done in exchange for your contribution. :rolleyes:
I think telling your daughter and your son-in-law what you were willing to contribute and what you expected in return could have gone a long way to avoiding these issues. I suggest this time that you offer the money with all the conditions and expectations that apply. Let them decide if it’s worth it. Don’t start adding new conditions later as you realize you care about more things than you thought. My honest feeling is that when you give a gift, it shouldn’t really come with any conditions.
