Wedding Money: Who's Footing the Bill? - Wedding Planning - Wedding Budget - TheKnot.com

Wedding Money: Who's Footing the Bill? - Wedding Planning - Wedding Budget - TheKnot.com: These days, the cost of a wedding makes a year at Harvard and Yale look affordable. How are you going to scrape together the bucks so you can have the bash you want? Put that idea about sticking up the Federal Reserve on hold. You have options -- legal, time-honored, respectable options. The kind of options that, unless you're in the habit of bouncing checks, won't land you behind bars. Here's a rundown of some of them, plus their pros and cons. Keep in mind that a combination of two or more may be how you end up getting your wedding paid for.

The Bride's Parents Pay
The traditional -- and still pretty popular -- way of paying for the wedding.

The Pros:
You don't have to dip into your nest egg to pay for the wedding, which means you'll probably be driving a better car, buying a better house and taking better vacations a year from now than your contemporaries who are paying -- in full or partially -- for their own wedding.

The Cons:"The person who pays ultimately gets what he or she wants," says JoAnn Gregoli, a wedding consultant and owner of Elegant Occasions in Denville, New Jersey. Which means that if you want 100 guests but your parents want 250, you'll probably end up with at least 175 to 200 people at your wedding. "Having your parents pay for the wedding doesn't hurt your wallet," notes Gregoli, "but you have to be willing to compromise on what the wedding will be like." Another downside: Having your parents pay for the wedding -- especially if they're retired, on a fixed income, or just not that well off to begin with -- could strap them down with some major debt.