It's a wonderful thing to have the money to celebrate your miraculous relationship.
However, when you're working with something as important as the start of your marriage, it's important to clarify whether or not the money comes with strings.
How things get worked out will impact life going forward.
- Are there expectations about the kind of wedding ceremony you will have? The wedding ceremony is the launching pad for the marriage you want, so you need a ceremony that makes sense to you and your partner.
You need wedding vows to support your marriage. - Are you clear (and in agreement) about the type of ceremony you want?
- Do the parents who are paying expect the parents who are not paying to have equal input? While certainly one could understand that the paying parents might expect greater input, what's being paid for is the start of your marriage.
You and your beloved will have to live in marriage with both sets of parents. - Are you clear what sort of input both sets of parents want?
- Are you clear (and in agreement) about the balance you and your partner want in parental involvement and visibility?
- Have you and your beloved agreed upon your ideal for wedding planning and execution, wedding ceremony and wedding reception?
- Are you clear what is negotiable and what is not for the two of you?
- Are you aware of your parents' desires? Are they balanced, complementary, competing?
Clarity's the key here.
You can't negotiate anything if you don't know what everyone's expectations are.
This can be incredibly tricky.
If you don't have a long history of successful negotiations with your parents (and by successful, I mean, with both parties being satisfied), there's no reason to assume that this will be any different than any other set of negotiations unless YOU change.
Having answers to the preceding questions will help.
So will finding professional support who can help you plan your conversations.
Believe me, no one ever had too much counseling leading up to a wedding, so it's only going to add to your wedding experience and your marriage experience.
And what you're looking for, in addition to that lifetime of happy and healthy marriage is a wonderful wedding experience.
Give yourselves every shot at having both by clarifying what you want and designing the wedding of your dreams with the generous people who love you!