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iQuestions Faculty, Ron Blue 
 
 
Question: 
 
Who's supposed to pay for the wedding? 
 
Answer: 
 
Who pays for the wedding, and how much to pay for the wedding is a 
question that is typically not answered until it’s too late. I received a 
letter not long ago from a couple who said, “We’ve put our kids 
through college. We don’t have high-paying jobs at all. Our daughter, 
who is now engaged, actually makes more money than my husband 
and I. And her fiancée also makes more money than both of us. She’s 
expecting us to pay for the wedding, and we don’t know whether we 
should pay for the wedding. What advice would you give?” 
 
I’d like to put this in a little bigger context of saying, “Whose wedding 
is it?” Is it the child’s wedding, or is it the parents’ wedding? I’ve seen 
an awful lot of weddings who have funded weddings that were really 
for their benefit, as opposed to their children’s benefit. Or I’ve seen 
mothers and daughters who have tremendous conflict over what is 
legitimate to put into the wedding budget. 
 
I can tell you how Judy and I handled this with our own children. We 
have three daughters and two sons, and they’re all married at this 
point. And I think one of the best decisions that we made was we 
decided, while the kids were still in high school, how much we would 
spend on a wedding.  
 
And we began to communicate that to our daughters before they even 
got into college. And what we said to them was, “We don’t care how 
you spend the money, but this is the limit on the amount of money. If 
 
 
you want to spend more than that, that’s fine, but you just need to 
figure out how to fund that.” And we found that our daughters had 
different desires in their wedding. One wanted a bigger reception than 
another. One wanted a different wedding gown than another. How big 
the wedding list was differed from child to child.  
 
And what I told my children was, if you don’t spend the budget that 
I’ve allocated for you, you can have whatever’s left. What I found was 
that they all spent it. However, it was always their wedding. They had 
the budget, they got to make the decisions, and consequently they 
had goal ownership on that whole issue. And we found that the 
wedding experience was a positive one rather than a negative one.  
 
I’d like to summarize it this way: Too often with our children we create 
coping gaps. And what a coping gap is a big difference between reality 
and expectations. And if you can set the right expectations then reality 
and expectations are the same, and you don’t have a coping gap. One 
of the best blessings and gifts that you can give to your children is to 
launch them in the marriage with the right expectations, and that 
matching the reality of your own budget. 
 
By the way, the way I answered that question would be the way I 
answered one of my daughters who is getting ready to have a second 
marriage. How much of that do we fund? And what Judy and I decided 
to do is the same thing that I told that couple. We decided how much 
we were willing to spend. But the reality is it’s her wedding, and she 
can spend whatever she wants on that wedding.  
 
This couple just needs to decide whether they want to spend anything, 
and if so, how much? There’s not a right amount to it. It’s really a 
function of their own budget and their own priorities, if you will, and 
their own needs. They’re not at all wrong to say, we’re not going to 
pay for that wedding, but it needs to be communicated very clearly 
and lovingly to their daughter before they just drop it on her. 
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