Money Moral Dilemma: Can my wife say no to her daughter's wedding demands?

Pollycat

GlamGirlie wrote: »

I would say your wife is by no means obliged to contribute - clearly that would be her choice.

However, if she has said "we will help out with the cost" or similar then she really should state how much she will contribute, as it will be difficult for the couple to budget without knowing a figure.

Weddings are run on strict budgets, and whether your budget is £12K or £30K, you still need to know how much you have.

And personally, I do think parents should contribute, but only to a certain extent, eg my parents bought my dress, shoes etc, the wedding cars, flowers and cake, his parents bought the mens' suits, wine, and stationery. We paid for the rest ourselves.

Why do you think parents should contribute to a wedding?

I've been married twice, once when I was 20 (and still living at home) and again when I was 35.
My parents gave me no financial help.

Nor did I ask for it - even for the first one when most women of my age were having church weddings funded wholly by their parents as that was the tradition back then.

We wanted to get married (my parents had no issue with the person I was marrying) so we paid for it as a couple.
And we 'cut our coats (or in my case, home-made dress made by me) according to our cloth'.

My parents did contribute to my 2 younger sisters' weddings but they both were in a less advantageous financial position to me.

duchy

"Can" your wife help with costs ?
Only you know if she has the financal means to do so

"Should she" is a different question

Personally my attitude would be -Yes I'll help out with a decent contribution but as a match for the couple's savings up to £XXX so they need to finish their education and get jobs first."

Whilst my personal feelings would be at eighteen she's too young especially in such a short relationship I realize saying so would simply make them more determined . People do get engaged after six weeks and live happily ever after but most relationships at that age don't last but there's no point in saying so. Just buying time and waiting for graduation and a bit of maturity (and their own home) will make it clear if there is genuine commitment before they get married. If they are adamant they want to get married now then they can pop to the registry office and have a marriage ceremony - If they want a wedding with a party - then they'll have to wait if they want the Bank of Mum to contribute.

meknowalot-51

Tell your wife that under no cicumstances should she commit to any amount,this all seems like blackmail to me.Just because her parents are not together anymore doesn't mean she can play them off each other.When is the wedding,any date been set yet?By refusing would encourage your unemployed stepdaughter to get out there and get a job.If she starts moaning about there not being any then she could create one rather than relying on the government(tax payer) for handouts.You can also encourage her to make it a long engagement,about two years sounds fine.All of this will make her a better person and them a better couple as two years of saving will show they mean what they say.
All this reminds me of when i was young,my parents didn't understand,they didn't know anything.I wanted a short engagement but her parents and mine thought otherwise,that was my first serious relationship.Here i am,about five very serious relationships later and married for ten this year.Met the wife in 98,engaged 2003 and wed in 2006,you learn to be cautious.
If you strongly feel that this person is right for you then great,live together for a year or two,there's no rush and nothing wrong with a bit of caution...................unless he's an illegal and just wants a passport?

crmism

So, neither of them are working, one is living off state benefits and the other is a student whose employment prospects are uncertain at best. This doesn't look to me like a sound recipe for a long-term relationship that will survive without continual injections of cash.

At the risk of alienating the pair of them, I think you must put your foot down and place a limit on how much you're going to spend, beyond which you will not under any circumstances go. The amount needs to be in direct proportion to how long you think this marriage will last and, at your stepdaughter's age, I don't believe she has the remotest idea of what marriage and the expense of a ceremony really entail. At the very least, encourage the pair of them to contribute by, eg, making artificial flowers and other decorations from kits, rather than buying them from a florist. That's what we did for my daughter's wedding. Every guest was very complimentary about them (they all thought they were real) and they lasted for years. Your stepdaughter could also have her dress made privately, which saves £000s of pounds - I should know as my wife made many bridal outfits for others.There's certainly no shame in being prudent from the start.

Yielding to her demands will, as you imply, expose you to more of them later on, so it's better that you leave her with no misconceptions about where you and your spouse stand. Realising that money doesn't grow on trees, and that it has to be earned, will do her good in the end.

rachy182

If in normal circumstances you would have given x amount towards a wedding then i would give them that. Telling her that this is towards her wedding and should she have another one then tough luck the money has already been spent. If she thinks shes mature enough to get married then shes old enough to face the concequences eg getting divorced. The relationship already sounds tense and if she found out another sibling got 5 grand and she got a pound its not going to help things.

briesmith

The mother should contribute just enough to make her daughter's wedding impractical; no one should get married in their teens. There is simply no reason to do so these days and it's a very bad idea all round.
The daughter doesn't come across as very nice although this could be the jaundiced eye of the stepfather playing a part I suppose. But if the daughter is indeed how she sounds then getting married will just be the start of years of unhappiness.
Why isn't she going to university or looking forward to life as a person in her own right? Why this desperate urge to marry? Is her home an unhappy one?
Seems to me there's bigger fish to fry here than worrying about the cost of a wedding frock.

PasturesNew

Pollycat wrote: »

Really?

So what does it mean where you live?

It's just a word for "person about whom nothing is known", "whole thing sounds flakey", "a joke of a situation".

Probably almost interchangeable with plonker.

kryssykk

This is easy. Your wife should ask herself two questions.
1) Can I afford to contribute
2) Can I live with the aftermath if I don't.
We paid for our sons wedding many years ago, not because we wanted to but his in- laws were dole reliant and couldn't afford to pay for their daughters wedding.
We just asked ourselves if we wanted our son to be happy. Answer YES and 23yrs later they are still together and happy.:rotfl:

splitinfinity

As someone has said before, there are alarm bells ringing here as opposed to wedding bells.

• Your step daughter is 18 years old (my generalisation is that young people are bad at relationships and money - it takes a few bumps till they get it all right - but there are exceptions!)
• Your step daughter is on benefits (again being on benefits and getting married are difficult, though not impossible, I am sure lots of people have more life experience here, but my assumption is she is expecting the wedding to cost her more than she has saved up.)
• She has got engaged after 6 weeks - again begs the question, 6 weeks into a relationship - how much thought has gone into the decision.
• you say 'already a tense relationship' - so I assume that there are the usual teenager/parent quibbles - again making this a hard topic to discuss

Instead of giving money, you need to find a good way to get to the bottom of what she is thinking and how serious she is - and figure out if she has figured everything out. Where to live, who will put the proverbial bread on the table, honeymoon costs etc. It could be that your stepdaughter is financially savvy, knows how things will pan out, knows what her spending limits are, has some job interviews lined up, has a career plan, and is a street smart kid with everything all planned out. Maybe she needs some short term help with finances, which you can contribute towards.

In which case, ask your wife how much she is comfortable giving (prepare to not get that money back ever - that is the worst case scenario, but entirely possible).

The more likely scenario (imo) is that this is all a bad idea, a teenager who is getting ahead of herself and is not ready for the big bad world but thinks she is prepared. If that is the case, you need to say no. It will all end badly, you will lose money, she will end up emotionally hurt and your tense relationship will turn even more sour. Tell her to give it time and save up - this will let her figure out if the engagement was too soon.

Financial struggles are the worst way to start a solid relationship and a surefire way to end a already rocky one. Just my 2 cents.

Pollycat

PasturesNew wrote: »

It's just a word for "person about whom nothing is known", "whole thing sounds flakey", "a joke of a situation".

Probably almost interchangeable with plonker.

The offical definitions are far less kind.

My understanding of the word is someone with a limp.