How Parents Can Plan for a Wedding on a Budget

Your child is getting married! This is a joyous time for your family. As you celebrate this milestone, the reality of wedding costs might start to set in. Helping your child plan their special day without derailing your own financial goals is a significant challenge.

This guide will show you how to plan for a wedding on a budget, ensuring you can contribute meaningfully without compromising your future. It's about making smart, informed decisions together.

Prioritize Open Communication

Before discussing any numbers, have an open conversation with your child and their partner. Understand their vision of the wedding and what aspects are most important to them. Does the venue matter more than the guest list? Is a live band a must-have?

This discussion helps everyone align their expectations. It also allows you to express your own financial boundaries clearly and kindly from the beginning.

Set a Clear Budget

Once you understand the couple's priorities, you can determine a realistic budget. Decide on a specific amount you are comfortable contributing. This could be a fixed sum or an offer to cover a particular expense, like the catering or venue.

Putting this agreement in writing prevents future misunderstandings. It creates a shared understanding and helps your child make financial decisions for their wedding with confidence. The goal is to support them, not to finance the entire event.

Explore Cost-Saving Venues

The venue often represents the largest wedding expense. Consider creative alternatives to traditional, costly locations. A backyard wedding party, for instance, can create a beautiful, intimate atmosphere while saving a significant amount of money. The right setup can transform a familiar space into something magical.

Find Smart Savings

When planning a wedding on a budget for your child, look for other areas to reduce costs. Encouraging your child to choose an off-season wedding date can dramatically lower venue and vendor prices. Sending digital invitations instead of traditional paper ones also cuts down on expenses.

DIY decorations can add a personal touch and reduce costs. You can also suggest limiting the guest list to close friends and family, which lowers catering and rental needs. Every small saving contributes to a more manageable wedding budget.

Protect Your Retirement Plans

Helping with a wedding is a wonderful gift, but it should not jeopardize your retirement. Before you commit any funds, review your own financial situation. Ensure your contribution does not force you to withdraw from retirement accounts or delay your long-term goals.

Your financial security is paramount. Offering your time, planning assistance, or creative skills can be just as valuable as a monetary contribution. Your support is what truly matters.

Start Planning for the Future

Navigating wedding expenses is a practical exercise in financial planning for everyone involved. By communicating openly and setting clear boundaries, you can help your child have a beautiful wedding without straining your finances. It's about celebrating a new beginning for them, while safeguarding your own well-earned future.

Do You Plan to Help Finance Your Childrens' Weddings?

Wedding Dress For Happy Couple in Love (Photo credit: epSos.de)

With the average wedding now costing $27,000, tying the knot has never been more expensive. Although over a third of couples are choosing to finance their big day completely themselves, many parents still wish to contribute to the cost. Even if there is no hint of a wedding in sight, if you have daughters in their teens or twenties – or sons for that matter - you may want to consider how you will save money to put towards their future wedding.

When to start saving

One thing that’s for sure is it’s never too soon to start saving; before you know it they’ll be grown up and engaged and it’s easier to put a little money away each month than to have to find extra money within the space of a year. It’s popular for parents to start a wedding fund after they've put their kids through college, as once this financial obstacle has been cleared you obviously have more available cash. However, this is not necessarily practical if you have a large family of widely varying ages, in which case you may have to juggle the two. Either way, the best course of action might be to participate in a dedicated regular saving scheme, looking at your current earnings and outgoings to determine a realistic amount that can be saved each month. If you do have a lump sum of money available to invest for the purpose you might wish to invest in a portfolio of bonds and stocks, which can potentially provide much greater returns; though there is inevitably an element of risk with these.

Don’t jeopardize your retirement

A couple of 14-carat gold wedding rings. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

While you want your daughter’s wedding day to be the best of her life, it’s important to be realistic about how much you can afford to contribute. It would be foolish to save for her wedding at the expense of your retirement; if you can’t give as much money as you would have liked, it doesn't mean you are letting them down and they’ll more than understand. Your children will be well aware of the current financial crisis and the negative impact this will have had on your savings accounts and pension plans. If your daughter is recently engaged, sit down with her and her fiancé and explain how much money you are able to provide; this means they can plan a wedding within the budget they have available to them, rather than basing it around additional money that you can no longer afford to give. Remember after all that for the majority of weddings the costs are now split three ways between the bride’s family, the groom’s family and the couple themselves, so you should not feel under any undue pressure to foot the whole bill.

Avoid getting into debt

On a similar note to that above, don’t be tempted to get into debt to help finance a wedding. While this might seem like your only option if the prospect of a wedding is suddenly thrust upon you  and you have not had the chance to prepare specific savings, it’s important to keep in perspective that it’s only one day and not even your child’s wedding  is worth getting into debt over. It might seem easy enough to make a payment on a credit card or to take out a loan, but when you consider the interest rates you will be charged for the privilege of doing so, the money you owe will quickly mount up. You wouldn't want your children to get into debt in this way, so follow your own advice. Use the rule of thumb that you will only pay for what you can afford to do so in cash; by paying with cash you can also usually receive discounts on your purchases, with everyone from florists to photographers ready to do a deal with you.

Be aware of the true costs

Before generously offering to pay for a number of items relating to the wedding, be aware of exactly how much they will cost. It might be hard to believe, but the average wedding dress would set you back $1,355, photography now stands at $2,186 and wedding cakes cost almost $500, so that’s over $4,000 before you have even considered the cost of the venue, catering and hiring a car for the day. These figures are based on the findings of the 2012 American Wedding Survey; more details of which are available online and makes useful reading if you feel out of touch with how much it now costs to get married. 

However, don’t let your knowledge of the true cost sway you into upping the amount of money you decide to give your daughter and your son-in-law to be. Rather than offering to pay for specific items it is probably wiser to offer a set amount of money which they can spend as they see fit.

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