For brides, talk to your husband-to-be first and discuss your budget, before you buy from suppliers of your choice or hire the most costly services of makeup artists, wedding coordinators, coutourier, etc. Before you go postal by demanding too much for your wedding, determine who should pay for your wedding and will cover the largest percentage of your wedding budget. This will serve as a guidelline for couples who would like to know the basic etiquette in who pays for what. Getting married these days costs a lot.

There has been a huge evolution in Wedding Etiquette on who pays for the weddings in the last century. Traditional wedding etiquette dictated that the bride's father should pay for the wedding. Of course, this was during the time when girls were kept inside their house by their fathers and not allowed to get a job or go to school, but do household chores and learn manner lessons and social etiquette and wedding etiquette in preparation for their role as a married woman.

A century ago, a daughter was 'given away' by her father to a young man who her father thought would be able to provide for her. The thought was that since the father would be giving his daughter away, he would host her wedding and pay for everything as a sign of his agreement to his daughter's marriage. This is the reason for the traditional wedding etiquette on who pays for the wedding.

Today, wedding etiquette on who pays for the wedding is not as rigid as it was before. The bride and the groom can go traditional, and thus should ask the father of the bride to host the wedding and pay for the entire wedding expenses. Or if the parents of the groom have expressed their desire to be a co-host of the wedding event, they may do so, especially if the parents of the groom are wealthy and are able to cover some of the expenses.

Most couples these days are both working and earning their own money. It is not a violation of wedding etiquette if they decide to take the expense of the wedding. In fact, many couples actually prefer to pay for the their own wedding. It gives them more control over all of the details. Often, traditional wedding etiquette is being set aside so that the couple and their family are able to choose for themselves.

Due to increasing costs, paying the entire share of the wedding may be beyond the means of either set of parents. For this reason, if both the bride and groom have jobs, they will most likely want to pay for the entire expenses for their wedding event.

Some parents, however, actually want to contribute to the cost of the wedding. Both brides and grooms should be aware of this and think of the feelings of their parents. Don't tell your parents no just because you think they may pay too much. Often, it is a great job for them to see you get married and they may even have money set aside for it.

It is more reasonable if you will sit down with your parents and discuss with them the projected costs of your wedding and ask them which part of the wedding expenses would they comfortably want to fund. This way, your parents will have an idea of the exact amount that they will shell out while the two of you, bride and groom, will know how much is it that you still need to raise.