 So,
you're now engaged to get married but haven't a clue what
to do, say or pay for! This article will provide you with
an overview of your duties and responsibilities and links
to other sections of our website where you can obtain further
information.
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Your first task is to establish who is going to pay for your
wedding. Traditionally, a wedding is hosted and paid for by
the bride's parents. Today, the etiquette of old is far less
rigid and only about 30% of weddings are paid for by the bride's
parents. More and more couples are opting to pay for their
own wedding since they are then free to choose exactly what
they want without the worry of putting their parents under
financial strain. However, many brides' fathers have prepared
themselves for their daughter's marriage by saving well in
advance and they welcome the opportunity to exercise their
prerogative. The next article in this series, Paying
For Your Sins, discusses this topic in greater depth.
If
you and your bride will be responsible for organising your
wedding (whether you are paying for it yourself or receiving
contributions from your or your bride's parents, you are
strongly advised to set a budget. Unless you have access
to unlimited funds, chances are that you will have to financially
plan your wedding very carefully. An inherent danger with
planning anything on the scale of a traditional wedding
is that you can very easily overextend yourselves, especially
if you commit yourselves to expenses on a one-by-one basis
without keeping an eye on the overall picture.
With the average cost of a traditional wedding in the UK
being about £11,000, overrunning by just 15 per cent
out will mean having to find another £1,650. If your
parents are contributing to your wedding, it is important
that you don't end up having to go back to them asking for
more money and thereby putting them under unwelcomed financial
pressure. If you and your bride are paying for the total
cost of your wedding, it may mean starting married life
with an unplanned debt.
Unfortunately, dealing with the financial aspects of getting
married can be the cause of much tension between those involved
in organising your wedding. However, by carefully monitoring
and controlling your expenditure with use of a budget, you
will go a long way to reducing the stress that you will
undoubtedly experience during your wedding preparations.
For further information about budgeting, please visit our
main article Budgeting
For Your Wedding.
Once
you know who is paying for your wedding and how much money
you have, you will be able to choose your marriage and reception
venues for the type and style of wedding you want (whether
it be a church or civil wedding, large or small etc.) and
choose a date. Deciding upon the date of your wedding will
not be as straight-forward as you might think since you
will need to obtain available dates from your preferred
venues. Popular venues get booked up early. However, if
your budget is a consideration, it is worth bearing in mind
that it is often much cheaper to get married on a weekday
or out of season as venues and other wedding service providers
are only too pleased to have an income at quieter times.
Also, venues that have vacant dates in the very near future
will charge less simply to have the date filled.
Since weddings are family occasions, your and your bride's
immediate families and relatives (usually one step removed
such as grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins) are always
included. You would also invite your close friends and possibly
work colleagues who you have known for some time. The parents
may also have close family friends that they would like
to invite, especially friends that have taken a close interest
or involvement in your upbringing.
If your budget is limited, keep the number attending your
service and wedding reception to a minimum, inviting others
to the evening reception only. Alternatively, to accommodate
more guests, you could opt for spending less per head on
the receptions. Halfing your cost per head will double the
number of guests you can invite.
Whatever number of guests you decide to invite, it is considered
that the perfect wedding guest list should provide a balanced
picture of the lives of the bride and groom and their families
(regardless of who is paying for your wedding). Therefore,
as a starting point, it is recommended that invitations are allocated using the following ratios: one third the
bride's parents' guests; one third the groom's parents'
guests and one third for the friends of you and your bride.
However, it is often the case that adjustments to this ideal
solution will need to be made, especially where family sizes
differ greatly.
Although both families will be involved in compiling the
guest list to ensure a good representation of family and
friends, ultimately the host who is paying for your wedding,
must give the final approval. Please visit our main article
on Inviting
Your Guests for further information on this subject.
Whatever
your thoughts about the desirability of wedding gift lists,
you will be bought gifts by your guests. The difficulty
most couples face when considering the issue of wedding
gifts is balancing the desire of your guests, who want their
carefully chosen gift to be received with appreciation,
with your desire to receive gifts that you need or would
find useful in your home. It is in no one's interest to
buy or receive gifts that are duplicated or not needed.
The answer to this problem is to have a wedding list from
which those wishing to buy you a gift can choose something
they know is wanted and will be appreciated. It is important
to remember that there is nothing wrong or presumptuous
with having a wedding list. It is only considered bad taste
if you try to force your wedding list onto your guests.
Therefore, together with your fiancée you will need
to compile a gift list in readiness for when your invitations are sent out so that it is available when your guests ask
for it. Please note, your gift list should only be made
available to guests upon request and should not be included
with your invitations as this is still considered bad manners
by many and it will cause offence to some of your guests.
It is a well known nuptial nicety that those attending your
wedding will buy you a gift - your guests will not need
to be reminded of this!
Traditionally, the groom is responsible for ensuring the
legal requirements are fulfilled together with paying the
church or registrar's fees. The legal preliminaries vary
depending on how you choose to marry and where. For example,
if you plan to get married in your bride's parish church
and you live in another parish, it is your responsibility
to ensure your marriage is authorised by the reading of
the banns in your own parish (a Church of England requirement).
If you have chosen a civil wedding to be held outside the
registration district in which you live, it is your responsibility
to 'give notice' at your local register office. Our main
article Marriage
Legal Requirements provides all the information you
need to know about fulfilling the legal requirements for
all types of weddings in all UK countries.
The Groom may also be responsible for organising the wedding insurance. Confetti offers wedding insurance for weddings in the UK and abroad.
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