Who should pay for the wedding?

This week I decided to look into the forum "who should pay for the wedding" this kind of goes along with my past blog about "who should have final say over the guest list?" Some said that it should be who is paying for the wedding, but what happens when nobody knows who will be paying for it, or how to bring up the conversation among family members? This can all be a disastrous fight that nobody wants to come near.

So, what did the community members say to this eager brides question? 

Below is her post:

am very disappointed that my father has not asked me what I have envisioned for my wedding and what estimated costs had I planned on. I feel like it is a discussion he should initiate but he has not. He has a substantially large income annually and spends more on traveling every year than I have even budgeted for my wedding, so money cannot be the issue. Has anyone encountered this and if so how did you go about starting the conversation? Thanks for any insight or suggestions!

Cheers, The Future Mrs. Rackey

Some of the community members responded by giving her advice on how to approach her father, but of the members attacked her question, and thought that it was totally wrong that she felt so entitled. 

Below are some of their responses to her question. 

It is 2012.  Brides and Grooms pay for their own weddings.  The idea of daddy paying for it went out the window when girls stopped marrying at 19 and 20 and going straight from their parents' house to their husband's house.

He has no obligation to contribute anything financially to your wedding.  Plan the wedding that you and your FI can afford, and go from there.

Dad is not required to pay for your wedding.  If you're old enough it get married you're old enough to pay for the wedding yourself.

When you start badgering them bout money etc it makes you look entitled. You need to plan on paying for it yourself. You do not ask people for money for your wedding.

Did you read the OP?  Her father never said he'd pay for her wedding and she wants to ask him.  She's assuming that because he has money to spare (in her opinion) then he should pay for the whole thing. And I stand by my advice that B&G's pay for their own weddings today.  If you have a family that can afford to host your entire wedding and they have offered to pay for the whole thing, then great.  In this day and age though, nobody should expect it.

These are just some of the responses to her question. I am not going to post to this forum yet, but in a few days I have decided that I am going to stir up the forum a little bit, and post something to hopefully make the community members strike back. 

I don't truly believe this, but I am going to post something like...."her father should pay for it, she should expect him to, thats horrible that you would even have to pay for any of it." I think that this will really strike a nerve with some of the members considering their strong views. I really don't believe in that comment, but it will make for an interesting view into their digital citizenship. 

Responses and Moving Forward

As I thought, there were no responses to my last post. Mostly, because it was a comment, and not necessarily a questions or controversial topic. Since my last post, there has still been a great display of digital citizenship. People are not arguing, respond respectfully, and there is no need for any censoring of comments. Everyone seems to be sharing ideas nicely and commenting respectfully. I decided to review post responses going back a month, and there was still no negative digital citizenship being displayed.

I have decided not to post this week, and find a forum that has good discussion going on. Then next week i will post, and hopefully I can spark some debate in the community. I want to get to know the other members of the community, and see how different people respond, so I can find the right thing to say, in order to spark a response. I think that it will be interesting to see how people respond to a comment out of the ordinary. Will they ignore it, attack the comment, help fight for the "victim" being attacked, or use their good digital citizenship to disagree.

I am not sure which subtopic I will go to this week within the forum, but I will let you know next week what has happened. I'm sure something interesting!

Color Schemes

As promised, I decided to pick a different subtopic from the wedding forum.

The subtopic that I posted under this week was..."color schemes." Before going into this subtopic forum I pretty much assumed that it would display good digital citizenship, because it is not a controversial topic.

While looking through the community, people were discussing color choices, what went well together, what clashed, and colors are good for different seasons, why they chose their colors, etc.

I decided to share why I chose the colors I chose, and so far nobody has responded, but I am still on the lookout. Some people had really cute stories why they chose the colors they chose. For example, one couple chose yellow and purple for their wedding, because her fiance purposed at a Laker game.

I shared that I chose purple, because it is my favorite color, and when my fiance and I were dating it became "our" color overtime. We decided to use every shade of purple in our wedding, and my fiance's favorite color is silver, so we are adding in silver trimmings, and white as a complimentary color.

I will be watching the community to see if anyone responds to my post. Not all posts are responded to if a question is not directly asked. I see great examples of digital citizenship in this forum, and community members are being very nice to one another, and congratulate each other on their upcoming ceremony/wedding.

Guest List

This week I decided that I was going to post on the forum. I have stuck with the "guest list" forum, because I wanted to see if others would have good digital citizenship when I posted my opinion on the forum.

As a refresher: People in the community were arguing over who has final say on the guest list. I myself, do not have issues with this, but it seems to be a huge issue within the wedding planning community.

Four days ago, I posted "I believe that it is up to the person who is paying for the wedding to have final say over the guest list. I believe that a "wishlist" should be compiled of all parties involved, and then the bride and groom should pick from their families "wishlist" as long as it is within budget and people allowed. If the brides parents are paying then they will have final say of how many people can attend, and vise versa, but it should be up to the bride and the groom to pick who attends their special day." 


A lot of people within the community agreed with me, but one individual said, "if the bride or grooms parents are paying then they should be able to say who is or is not coming, and should be able to edit the list." I am not sure that I agree with this, but I still see this as good digital citizenship, because I was not attacked for my opinion. I was actually expecting more controversy than that, but I am glad to see that people's opinions are not attacked in here.

Next, week I plan on visiting another subtopic to see if I get the same response!