Paying for a wedding, rescinded promises

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mandajane

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Hey,

So my fiance and I planned a large wedding, with ample room for both of our large families. Both families offered to contribute to the wedding, and we worked it out that my FH and I would pay 1/3 of the cost, my mother would pay 1/3 of the cost, and my FH’s family would pay 1/3 of the cost. Everyone was cool with it, and we started planning.

Early in the process, my FH’s family said they’d prefer to pay vendors directly, than give us money and have us pay the vendors. We were fine with that, and worked out what they would pay for, and what not.

We found a lovely location in our price range, and it was all excellent, until today, when I had my FH call my FMIL to inform her that we got a bill from our reception venue informing us that the remainder of the payment was due in a week.

FMIL informed FH that they “changed their mind” about helping us, and we’d have to cover their portion as well. We can’t afford to, my mother can’t afford to. We’ve already signed contracts because they were sitting in the room with us and the site rep saying “oh yes, we’ll be paying for that.”

I don’t know what to do. We picked this venue because it was the one she liked best. Even though she’s only paying for 1/3 of the wedding, 2/3 of the guest lists are her friends and FFIL’s coworkers.

We had been planning to buy a house to move into together after the wedding, but now it looks as though our down payment will have to go to covering contracts we already signed, thinking we’d be getting help with the wedding.

What should I say/do? Any advice on letting go of this anger and betrayal I’m feeling right now?
 
Wow, that is cold! If their financial status changed or something bad happened that’s one thing…but they could tell you that, not just say they changed their mind. I would sit down with your future husband and pare down the guest list…explaining to future inlaws that you have to cut expenses, and won’t be able to invite all they wanted. Hopefully that will save enough to help.
 
Your FH needs to handle things with his parents. I hope he can talk to them and get to the bottom of the issue, and hopefully convince them to keep their financial commitment. Perhaps there is something going on financially with them that you are unaware of. So, try to give them the benefit of the doubt until your FH has talked to them.

Save where you can on things you have not yet purchased.

Cut the guest list, since invitations haven’t gone out yet you should be able to do this. The reception cost will be a big chunk so the fewer people the less you will spend there. The fewer people the less you spend on invitations, postage, etc. It is really your biggest variable cost. Also the fewer attendants you have the less you spend on flowers and such.

Certainly your parents and his parents can offer their suggested guest list, but ultimately it is up to you two to invite YOUR friends and family that you want there, not FH’s parents’ work friends.
 
Future Husband
FMIL is Future Mother in Law
FFIL is Future Father in Law
 
OP, you have my sympathies. Sometimes we can learn from others’ positive examples and sometimes from negative examples.

You can try to negotiate your way out of the expensive contracts and plan a simpler wedding Perhaps a cake and punch reception.
 
You have learned a valuable lesson about your future in-laws. You now know to be skeptical when they make promises, and you know that they are unreliable, so you won’t expect anything from them in the way of help with finances, childcare, etc. Remember, you are marrying your fiance, not his parents, so there is no reason to bring this anger and betrayal into your marriage. I doubt their intention was to ruin their son’s wedding - they may have legitimate financial hardships of their own that they are embarrassed to reveal to their children. Think of it as a failed investment and move on. We’ve all made financial mistakes, and you will recover in time.

Slash the guest list, starting with anyone involved with the in-laws who is not blood. Hopefully the existing contract holders will be willing to work with you since they were there when the funds were promised. Ultimately, all of these things are secondary - try to let this be a reminder of what is truly the priority on your wedding day.
 
“We had been planning to buy a house to move into together after the wedding, but now it looks as though our down payment will have to go to covering contracts we already signed, thinking we’d be getting help with the wedding.”

I hope you are able to figure out how to cut wedding expenses, but it may be a blessing in disguise to not be able to buy a house immediately. You and your husband will have a lot of stuff to figure out during the first year or so of married life, and adding a house purchase on top of all of that may be too much. Even just figuring out how to divvy up household tasks in a one-bedroom apartment can be stressful.

There’s also the issue that your needs are going to change a lot as time goes by. My husband and I have three kids and I’ve been wanting to buy a house for quite some time. If you compare my ideas about our house from year to year, there’s been a lot of change. One issue that you may barely be aware of at this point is school quality. It would be bad to buy a house and then realize some years later that you aren’t willing to send your children to the local public schools. Or if you plan to send your kids to private school, it may take you a while to realize that you have to economize on the house to be able to afford private school. Another thing I’ve figured out about our family is that we don’t want to have to do a lot of driving or commuting. So our future home has to be close to my husband’s work.

Buying and selling a house is such an expensive process that you might even want to wait until you have children to make a final decision. I guarantee that you will look at homes totally differently if you have kids. I also wouldn’t buy a vast home in the hope of having a large family, as the large family may not materialize.
 
I sent e-mails to most of the vendors, seeing what we can do. My FH estimated the monetary amount that they are no longer providing equalled out to 75 guests, so he’s going to sit down with them and have them cut 75 people from their list. He said he hopes when he sits down with them, and the bills, and shows them why we have to cut them, that they may be willing to pay for the people they want to keep.

As far as the house, we were going to buy a nice 2-flat with 2 two bedrooms in it. Rent out one while we lived in the other, until we had children and needed more space. I’ll take your housing purchase advice into consideration, though.
 
I do not wish to break anyones rice bowl, but please allow me to offer you some advice.
To begin with, I do not care for either elaborate weddings or funerals. The money spent on either is best spent on the living!
Unless you come from wealthy families, that can afford such events, and you have substantial amounts of money in the bank, you shouldn’t have an elaborate blow out.
Why should you spend so much money on a guest who has never contributed one dime toward your up bringing or education? Especially when you consider the cost per person for a sit down dinner today.
But to the matter at hand. By American custom, it is usually the Brides family who pays for the wedding and wedding feast. Since that is not the case in your situation, and your fiances family is renigging on their promise, especially when they found out how expensive it is going to be, how do you think your relations with them will be in the future?
My suggestion is for you to bite the bullet right now and cut your losses. Cancel all arrangements except for the Wedding Mass and perhaps the Limo to and from the Church. If you or your family can afford a simple reception with a small guest list afterwards, then do that. If there are objections from your fiance or his family, let them know that it is either that or the wedding is off. The reason I say this is that if those people are causing you problems now, this is nothing to what is likely to happen in the future!
I know it is difficult, but it is better to settle all financial problems before you get married than after…when such problems are not so easy to settle and can get very expensive, not only in material things but psychologically.
The last thing I want to offer you is that the only person you should consider marrying is your absolutely best friend. Forget all about romance and sex. When you live with someone those two things are relatively unimportant. But in the strain of daily living, a toilet seat left up, or you didn’t tell him you used his razor to shave your legs and he tried to shave with the same blade in it beecome major issues unless you are each others best friend. Unfortunately your exposition of your problem leads me to think that both of you have a way to go in this. Never forget: marriages of best friends last, all others are problematic, without exception.
 
That sounds so frustrating! I agree with the others who have said to cut the guest list down significantly. Why are your inlaws wanting to invite so many people? Are these people that you and your fiancé know personally?
 
Let your intended decide what to do about his parents and how it is to be done, let him do it, and face whatever consequences come out of that together. If that means moving to another venue and informing the “futures” that their guest list has been cut down by 2/3, so be it. Whatever you and your husband want to bite off and chew; no one is going to blame you, whatever that is, but it will be yours to chew for a very long time.

Next time, however, do not consent to trust your in-laws whatsoever when it comes to money. Their credibility rating is blown, and those are their consequences, which they, too, will get to live with for a very long time themselves.
 
“If that means moving to another venue and informing the “futures” that their guest list has been cut down by 2/3, so be it.”

And try not to enjoy it too much.

(I’d have a hard time with that one.)

“Next time, however, do not consent to trust your in-laws whatsoever when it comes to money. Their credibility rating is blown, and those are their consequences, which they, too, will get to live with for a very long time themselves.”

Right. If they ever say, buy XYZ and we’ll reimburse you, you’ll know what to think.
 
mandajane said:
Hey,

So my fiance and I planned a large wedding, with ample room for both of our large families. Both families offered to contribute to the wedding, and we worked it out that my FH and I would pay 1/3 of the cost, my mother would pay 1/3 of the cost, and my FH’s family would pay 1/3 of the cost. Everyone was cool with it, and we started planning.

Early in the process, my FH’s family said they’d prefer to pay vendors directly, than give us money and have us pay the vendors. We were fine with that, and worked out what they would pay for, and what not.

We found a lovely location in our price range, and it was all excellent, until today, when I had my FH call my FMIL to inform her that we got a bill from our reception venue informing us that the remainder of the payment was due in a week.

FMIL informed FH that they “changed their mind” about helping us, and we’d have to cover their portion as well. We can’t afford to, my mother can’t afford to. We’ve already signed contracts because they were sitting in the room with us and the site rep saying “oh yes, we’ll be paying for that.”

I don’t know what to do. We picked this venue because it was the one she liked best. Even though she’s only paying for 1/3 of the wedding, 2/3 of the guest lists are her friends and FFIL’s coworkers.

We had been planning to buy a house to move into together after the wedding, but now it looks as though our down payment will have to go to covering contracts we already signed, thinking we’d be getting help with the wedding.

What should I say/do? Any advice on letting go of this anger and betrayal I’m feeling right now?
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I have a little experience in something similar that fact prompts me to ask if perhaps there is more to this story than you have been comfortable including that might change the opinions of those who poste here.

If everything you wrote tells the entire story I wonder that you didn’t cut all the guests that are not those you would invite on your own.

How well do you know his parents? It seems to me that if your future in-laws going back on their word blind sided you, you probably don’t know them very well. Which makes me think that you may not know your FH well either because this is probably not the first time that they have pulled something like this. If your FH was raised to not be able to trust those who raised him, he may have some big issue with trust altogether.

Another thought. Did you and/or your future hubby ask them to help with the wedding without letting them know that you have a bit of money saved and did they just discover that little thing? Did they perhaps learn this from a third person?

BTW if your story is complete, you will not be able to trust them in anything.
Annie
 
Xantippe said:
“If that means moving to another venue and informing the “futures” that their guest list has been cut down by 2/3, so be it.”

And try not to enjoy it too much.

(I’d have a hard time with that one.)

“Next time, however, do not consent to trust your in-laws whatsoever when it comes to money. Their credibility rating is blown, and those are their consequences, which they, too, will get to live with for a very long time themselves.”

Right. If they ever say, buy XYZ and we’ll reimburse you, you’ll know what to think.
Click to expand...
The bridal couple have been put into an awful position by his parents, they have really broken trust with their son and his future bride in a way that was totally unnecessary (because as other posters have noted, the traditional “requirement” on the groom’s family is not financially heavy), and there isn’t a neat answer to their problem.

The groom’s family has really left him in an embarrassing position, not to mention a financially difficult one. He has every reason to be very angry with them. The bride-to-be does, too, but she will be wiser to let her intended decide how to handle this. Sometimes it is better to just swallow the pill and move on, sometimes the couple will want to confront the parents with their betrayal, sometimes there will be a creative middle response. It is up to them, but the bride will be wise to let her husband-to-be take the lead with his own parents, and to let him do the talking about it. For her, the response of pursed lips and a refusal to talk to anyone about it except to refer them to her fiancé will probably serve her best. (When the tables are turned and it is her parents that need to be taken on for the sake of her husband and her own family, she will be glad to have set this precedent.)
 
mandajane said:
I don’t know what to do. We picked this venue because it was the one she liked best. Even though she’s only paying for 1/3 of the wedding, 2/3 of the guest lists are her friends and FFIL’s coworkers.
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“MIL, I completely understand how situations like this can sometimes change. I’m afraid we can’t afford such a large wedding anymore. We’re either a) going to forfeit the deposit (if it was her contribution) and host a smaller reception at this other location or b) drastically cut the guest list so that it only includes immediate family and close friends. We love you and hope you will understand why we will no longer be able to invite Bob from legal/Mary from rotary club/next-door neighbor Jane.”
 
mandajane said:
Hey,

So my fiance and I planned a large wedding, with ample room for both of our large families. Both families offered to contribute to the wedding, and we worked it out that my FH and I would pay 1/3 of the cost, my mother would pay 1/3 of the cost, and my FH’s family would pay 1/3 of the cost. Everyone was cool with it, and we started planning.

Early in the process, my FH’s family said they’d prefer to pay vendors directly, than give us money and have us pay the vendors. We were fine with that, and worked out what they would pay for, and what not.

We found a lovely location in our price range, and it was all excellent, until today, when I had my FH call my FMIL to inform her that we got a bill from our reception venue informing us that the remainder of the payment was due in a week.

FMIL informed FH that they “changed their mind” about helping us, and we’d have to cover their portion as well. We can’t afford to, my mother can’t afford to. We’ve already signed contracts because they were sitting in the room with us and the site rep saying “oh yes, we’ll be paying for that.”

I don’t know what to do. We picked this venue because it was the one she liked best. Even though she’s only paying for 1/3 of the wedding, 2/3 of the guest lists are her friends and FFIL’s coworkers.

We had been planning to buy a house to move into together after the wedding, but now it looks as though our down payment will have to go to covering contracts we already signed, thinking we’d be getting help with the wedding.

What should I say/do? Any advice on letting go of this anger and betrayal I’m feeling right now?
Click to expand...
I so feel for you, as the exact same thing happened to me. You are getting excellent advice.
 
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