Me and my girlfriend are planning to get married in a few months. I’ve always learned that the brides family customarily pays the expenses in a wedding, but my girlfriend’s parents are saying (somewhat conveniently, I may add) that that is “oldschool” and nowadays it is customary for both families to pay. Is this true?
IMO, YOU should pay for the wedding, and any gifts or help either set of parents wish to give should be considered exactly that, a gift.
If you’re not old and financially secure enough to bankroll your own wedding, are you old and financially secure enough to get married?
You and your girlfriend should pay for it. And if you can’t pay for it in cash (no credit), then you can’t afford it.
I’m with Anaamika. If you are adult enough to get married, you are adult enough to pay for it. If the parents want to help out, great. If not, that’s their perogative. And that goes for the parents of the bride as well as the groom.
The man every single day of his life.
Miss Manners’ take on the subject:
So the other posters here are right. If you and your fiancee are both adults living independently from your parents, neither one of you has a right to expect your parents to give you a wedding, or to pay for any part of it beyond what they freely choose to contribute as a gift.
Your only responsibilities here are
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to find out tactfully how much, if anything, each set of parents wishes to contribute;
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to accept whatever they contribute, if anything, cheerfully and gratefully;
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to consult both sets of parents about their preferences concerning (at least some of) the wedding arrangements, whether they are putting in anything financially or not, on the grounds that they are the heads of your respective immediate families and that this is a family event; and
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to make all your guests welcome and treat them with generous hospitality, even if you’re serving hot dogs on paper plates because that’s all you can afford, and to have an absolutely wonderful time.
Oh, and congratulations!!! 
Ditto.
It doesn’t matter what we say. How do you think this is going to go? That if you can find ‘proof’ that it is customary for the bride’s parents to pay, they will cough up? This is one of those arguments that you lose merely by having, as it will lead to bitterness and resentments and division on a day that should be about union. Take whatever they offer with a whole heart and don’t worry a minute about who should do what or what is fair or customary.
It’s kind of like asking how many cows your wife cost to buy her off her dad. It’s a bit outdated.
Congratulations! I’m assuming that you and your fiancee are financially independent adults, in which case paying for your wedding is your responsibility. If either sets of parents offer, that’s lovely, but they are under no obligation to do so. And keep in mind that if they do pay, you might end up with a wedding that’s not at all to your personal tastes.
It’s rather rude of you to suggest your fiancee’s family is shirking their responsibilities. I hope you haven’t said as much to your fiancee or her parents.
You want to get married, you pay. Simple as that. If anyone offers to cover costs, you can graciously accept their help, but by no means should anyone’s assistance be assumed or expected. The only ones obligated to pay, IMO, are the couple to be married.
This is nice, seeing a custom changed for the good.
My marriage cost nothing. We got a license, went to the justice of the peace, my wedding dress, used, cost $10 and the reception was the christmas party the bar where we met had (it was December).
My wife and I paid for our own wedding. We were in our thirties though. We got by with a paltry $15,000 in 1995. We financed the whole thing. I really didn’t want to spend the money. I really didn’t want to have the whole service. I capitulated. I still think it was a waste of money.
While it is nice that someone wishes to debate something other than politics, ©AGW, and the existence of a god in Great Debates, this seems to be more of a poll (IMHO) or a personal decision help (MPSIMS) question.
Coin flip says that it is off to IMHO.
I just paid for one.
It depends. First, there is no custom I’ve noticed that the groom’s parents pay, except for certain things like the rehearsal dinner.
Who has money? If the bride and groom are well advanced in years, and have been working for a while, them paying is perfectly reasonable. If the parents have a lot more money, then them paying is reasonable, as a gift.
But that doesn’t mean uncontrolled spending. What we did, and what my wife’s parents did when we got married, was to set a budget. If we underspent we got to keep the rest. If we overspent (we didn’t) we paid for the difference.
However no one in our family has ever had a large wedding. We had 25 people which is the record for three generations.
Now that that is settled, I will note that my (then) fiancee and I, each living outside our respective parents’ homes, paid for out own wedding in 1983. Her folks chipped in for the rehearsal dinner and my Mom chipped in for the alcohol, (at that time in our social circle, wedding alcohol was the husband’s family’s “responsibility”), but those were gifts and not expectations on our parts.
It really depends on the cultural and socio-economic backgrounds of all involved, but the fact is that if your parents are unwilling to contribute, or her parents’ contribution is predicated on your parents paying up as well…you’ll just have to suck it up and pay for it yourself.
For instance, culturally, I had the expectation that my parents would contribute towards my education and I know they plan to do so for my marriage (and I expect to do this for my own children, btw). Traditionally my parents would be on the hook for the entirety of the wedding costs for both me and my sis but they set forth how much they were planning to give my sibling, and her husband’s family matched it. They set aside the same amount of money for me-if my fiance’s family is of the type to contribute and has the resources to do so, that’s fine, if not, that’s fine too.
However, as I said, 99% of people from my specific culture expect two things from their children a) expensive advanced degrees and b) posh weddings and they tend to be willing to contribute towards both.
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The modern custom is to do what you want for your wedding, pay for it yourself, and gratefully accept any offers to help out financially (although be warned, offers of money gifts may come with strings you might not want).
It sounds a little bit like you were expecting to not have to pay at all for a wedding. Sorry - you’re a decade or two late for that.