Here’s the setup.
Dad has two daughter’s.
Daughter 1 married recently (in dad’s town) and dad paid X dollars to cover wedding expenses.
Daughter 2 decided to do a destination wedding (rhymes with Wow-eee) with long #$%#@ flight time and high dollar accommodations.
Daughter 2 also wants to have a reception in her town (not dad’s).
Dad suggested that eloping would be a wonderful thing to do as daughter could have a wowee wedding and still celebrate with everyone after the honeymoon.
Daughter 2 insisted that she wants mom and dad at her wedding
Dad’s OK with all of this (other than the #$%#@ long flights) and will commit to paying the same amount X.
Daughter 2 drew up a budget for her wedding and hometown reception with a total close to X.
Dad thinks that since daughter 2 chose exotic location that she should have a budget of X MINUS the cost of mom and dad having to travel and pay for accommodations in exotic location.
Dad is OK with travel and hotel costs for the reception.
So teeming masses please help.
Should the wedding budget be **X **dollars or X minus mom and dad’s travel.
I’m asking for a …ah…er…friend
How much are the groom’s family paying for the wedding?
Are the groom’s parents expected to pay their own airfare and hotels?
As a fraction of X (e.g. “20% of X”), how much would the airfare and hotels be?
And am I the only one who saw this and had a flashback to The Brady Girls Get Married (where Carol hesitated giving Jan her blessing to get married because her dream was for Marcia to get married first)?
So your contribution is the entire budget for the wedding? Maybe she should set the budget for something she and her partner can actually afford. Any gifts from parents are just nice-to-haves.
But if you want to be formulaic about your gift, don’t forget inflation.
I think it matters if this is “mom and dad will have to borrow to cover the extra cost” or “mom and dad will have to pull money out money that will probably end up as an inheritance later”.
This is the reason why I’ve told my two that as far as weddings go, they are pretty much on their own and my strong advice is to spend as little as possible.
The expectation that the brides father pays seems highly out of touch in 2020.
I basically did this for my daughters, and our airfare was not part of the budget the dauther getting married away from her and our home got.
But we could afford it, so I agree with others that it depends on what the parents can afford.
Well, costs have an influence. Dad is retiring in the first quarter of this year and is probably over cautious about the wedding’s impact on his retirement income. No borrowing is involved but cash flow would require some management.
Ouch - but I’d say, keep the budget as X, and pay for the flight and hotel separately. That way, you not only don’t have to worry about #2 perceiving some sort of slight that you paid more for #1’s wedding, but you don’t have bad blood with the new in-laws over how they paid their own way but you expected their son to “lessen” his wedding for your arrangements.
Also, “casually” remind the couple of this when it comes time for them to decide where they spend Thanksgiving and/or Christmas…
Actually after paying X for #2 daughter #1 may feel the slight as she will realize that dad is paying X AND paying extra to travel to out of town events.
Dad’s pretty sure that the in-laws are just as ticked off about expensive travel arrangements and have no expectations for the wedding.
The couple lives much closer to dad’s than the in-laws. Hence this is less of a bargaining chip.
That way, both daughters get to spend X on their wedding, and also get to have their parents there. The fact that you have to spend more money in order to provide “parents there” for your second daughter is unfortunate for you (if spending 0.2 * X on a holiday in Wowee wasn’t the kind of thing you would ordinarily do) but doesn’t really affect what your two children got.
I’d be concerned about daughter #1 feeling pissed off because she either a) isn’t invited to her sister’s wedding or b) has to spend a buttload of her money on it, though. Is she going?
I would wish them the best and have a reception in my home town for X.
Of my three children, one paid for his own wedding at a country club near where his wife is from. Her father wasn’t poor but not wealthy either. The second one’s wedding was in his wife’s hometown. Although I paid for the rehearsal dinner, her father paid for a massive wedding reception that he used to invite all his business acquaintances. His business and it was quite expensive (he was a new car dealer). The third one was my daughter. They were in middle to late 30s and just rented a restaurant near their apartment and paid for a meal for maybe 40. I’d have been willing to help, but they didn’t want it.
If Mom wants to attend the destination wedding, Dad should not be pinching pennies. If neither of them want to go and are only doing so to placate Daughter #2, I guess it makes sense to subtract their travel expenses from the wedding gift. But the whole situation sounds kind of sad to me.
I lean towards this one. Destination weddings are hard on all of the guests, not just dad. Wowee for their honeymoon perhaps, but it’s really selfish to expect everyone to incur this kind of expense.
This is why I hate destination weddings. Expecting guests to pay for airfare and accommodations so you can get married on an exotic beach at sunset seems self-centered to me. I know Mom and Dad are not just guests, but same principle.
What I’d do:
Option #1: Calculate how much (if anything) I had to pay for travel and accommodations to Daughter #1’s wedding. Add that to X. Tell Daughter #2 that’s the total amount you’ll spend for the wedding AND your travel and lodging. Since she’s in her thirties and earns a comfortable living, she can make up the difference if that’s not enough for her. You’re generous enough to pay for a nice wedding; nobody said you had to pay for a dream wedding.
Option #2: Give Daughter #2 X. Pay for your own travel and accommodations. Determine how much more that is than the total you spent on DD#1’s wedding, including travel and lodging. Give DD#1 a check for the difference.
Maybe DD#1 would have liked a pricey destination wedding but was considerate enough to realize she’d be asking too much of her parents to pay for their travel, too.
