Who Pays for What?
Wedding costs can easily take on a life of their own, quickly multiplying beyond your means. Before the wedding planning begins, create a ballpark budget, with the parties who are contributing money for the wedding. This will help determine many of the broader aspects of your wedding, such as size, location, and menu.
Options
Jewish law does not speak much to the question of how wedding costs should be split. Traditionally in the United States, the bride's family paid for the reception, photographer, flowers, and invitations. The groom's family paid for the rings, the rabbi, music, liquor, and the honeymoon.
Sometimes families have different expectations of who will pay for engagement parties, pre-wedding meals, and various parts of the wedding itself. If the wedding will include a weekend and Shabbat and the bride's parents are paying for the wedding, it would be appropriate for the groom's parents to offer to pay for Shabbat meals for both families and their guests.
While even today the bride's family often assumes the cost of the wedding, many brides and grooms get married later in life and may be financially established enough to pay for large parts of the wedding themselves. Additionally, depending on their financial situations, the two families may decide to split the cost of the wedding. In Israel today this is almost always done.
If one set of parents is paying for the wedding, there is an inherent danger that the other family may feel left out of the planning process. It is the bride and groom's responsibility to be a liaison and make sure both families feel their concerns are being addressed. You might involve the parents who are not paying by sending each other pictures, going dress or tux shopping with them, calling them periodically with updates, asking their opinions, and, of course, telling them how excited you are to meet their relatives.
In Israel the parents of the bride and groom usually pay not only for the wedding but also for the home the bride and groom will live in after they are married. This may be one of the reasons why Israeli weddings tend to be much more informal and less costly than their diaspora counterparts.
If the family paying for the wedding is much more financially wealthy than the other, they should nevertheless take care not to plan such a lavish wedding that the other family might be embarrassed. This is especially true if the groom's family is paying for the wedding since today many people still assume the bride's family foots the bill.
Balancing Needs and Wants
While a wedding is only one day in your life, it is an important one for most couples. What aspects are more or less important to the bride and groom will be an important factor in deciding how to budget. For instance, you might feel that you can save money on the menu by having fish instead of meat or by passing hors d'oeuvres instead of serving a smorgasbord. You might use the money you saved to have a videographer in addition to still photos.
Here are some questions to consider when determining your wedding budget:
How many people do we want to have?
Who will be paying for the wedding?
Do we want a more formal or more informal wedding?
What would we do with the money saved?
What do we envision when we think about our forthcoming wedding?
Would we be comfortable taking a loan to pay for the wedding?
