Expenses - Who Pays for What?

While your parents are paying for your entire wedding, you'll still have a budget to work within.  Often couples and their families have the most conflict over the wedding budget and individual expenses, so do your best to set an overall budget amount first, and then work from that number when you make choices about the type of wedding and reception you'll have.

By far the potentially biggest wedding expense is the reception.  If you rent an exclusive venue, provide a full meal, provide an open bar... you can spend thousands of dollars.  For example, if you rent a vineyard, hire a caterer and staff, hire a band, rent tents, tables, chairs, etc, you can easily spend $25,000 to $40,000 on the reception, especially if you invite a couple hundred guests.

Before you get that far, in order to determine what your budget is you'll need to know how much money you'll have to work with.  Normally the bride's family pays for most or all of the expenses, but that's not always the case.  Much of the time the bride and groom cover the expenses themselves, especially if they're older or if this is not their first wedding.

Here's a breakdown of who, at least traditionally, tends to pay for what expenses.

Bride's Family

• Groom's wedding ring
• Wedding invitations and announcements
• Wedding gown, shoes, etc.
• Ceremony location fee
• Flowers for both the ceremony and reception
• Flowers for the female members of the wedding party
• Photography
• Bridesmaid gifts
• Limos or other transportation
• Wedding reception

Groom's Family

• Bride's engagement and wedding rings
• Marriage license
• Wedding officiant fee
• Bouquet for the bride
• Boutonnieres for the male members of the wedding party
• Rehearsal dinner and/or party
• Honeymoon

 Wedding Party

• Dresses or tuxedos
• Portion of the shower and bachelor and bachelorette parties
• Their own transportation
• Their own lodging (although sometimes the bride and groom's family covers this cost)

These are just guidelines.  Often the groom's parents pay our photography fee, for example.  In some cases the groom's parents have paid for the majority of a wedding.  In the end it doesn't matter who pays for what - what matters is that you know what amount you have to work with so you can plan your wedding accordingly.