Getting married these days is very costly. For brides, before you buy from suppliers of your choice or hire the most costly services of makeup artists, wedding coordinators, coutourier, etc, talk to your husband-to-be first and discuss your budget.

Before you go bridezilla by demanding this and that for your wedding, determine who pays for your wedding and will cover the largest percentage of your wedding budget.

Below are the wedding etiquette on who pays or should pay for your wedding. This will serve as a guide for couples who would like to know the basic etiquette in who pays for what.

– Traditional Wedding Etiquette – Who Pays For the Wedding?

Wedding Etiquette on who pays for the weddings has evolved for the last century. Traditionally, wedding etiquette books dictate that the bride’s father should pay for the wedding. This was during the time when girls were kept by their fathers inside their house, not allowed to work and go to school, but do household chose and must have lessons from lady manners to teach them social etiquette and wedding etiquette in preparation for their life as married women.

A daughter was ‘given’ out by her father to a boy or a man who his father thought could feed or fend his daughter when he was gone. And since he would be giving his daughter away, he would host his daughter’s wedding and pay for everything as a sign of his agreement to his daughter’s marriage. This is the traditional wedding etiquette on who pays for the wedding.

– Modern Wedding Etiquette – 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.

But since most couples nowadays are both earning their own money, it is not a violation of wedding etiquette if the bride and the groom decide to pay for their own wedding. Some couples prefer to pay for the their own wedding so that they can have more control over the number of guests and who are the persons to invite and how the celebration of the wedding should be held.

Wedding etiquette on who pays for the wedding is, most of the time, being set aside to grant the wishes of the couple and immediate family members.

– Alternative Ways of Paying – Wedding Etiquette

Because of the high cost of living these days, paying for the entire cost of the wedding may be beyond the means of the parents of the bride or even of the parents of the groom. If the bride and the groom are earning money for themselves, they may consider paying for the entire expenses fo their wedding.

However, there may be parents who would like to contribute to the wedding cost. Brides and grooms should be sensitive with this matter. Don’t say no to your parents even if you think they will hand to you everything that they have. It is their joy to see you get married and their pleasure to play a big part of your wedding (that is by shelling out money for the wedding cost).

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.

Wedding etiquette on who pays for what is not anymore big question these days. The only etiquette that is required of bride and groom is to talk out with their parents the issue of costs or who pays only if the parents have voiced desire to co-host the wedding affair.

If you are planning a wedding and plan to have a unity candle as part of the ceremony, you might want to think outside the box.

Traditionally, the unity candle involves three candles. The bride has one, the groom the other, and their two lighted candles light the third candle. This is done to represent the coming together of the two people to make one unit. In some alternate methods, family members are invited to participate in the unity candle lighting, often the mothers of the bride and groom, or other close members of the family. Each family then lights a candle, and together they light the unity candle to symbolize of the coming together of the families.

Now, there are a few twists you can add to this fairly conventional aspect of a wedding ceremony. You can provide each guest with an unlit candle when they arrive at the ceremony. After the couple lights the unity candle, they can ask the guests to move to the front of the church (or wherever the ceremony is being held) and light their candles with the lighted unity candle. This can take a bit of time and might be best with a smaller guest list. But it is a meaningful way to not only get your guests involved in the ceremony itself, but also symbolize the union of family and friends with the marriage.

If there is a large guest list and it would be a prohibitive waste of time to do a candle lighting involving everyone at the ceremony, some brides and grooms like to bring the unity candle to the reception. Light the candle again and provide each guest with a small votive candle (the candle holder will be on the tables at individual table settings). As guests come into the reception area or hall, they can light their votive and take it to their table to place into the votive holder. This small votive candle can double as a wedding favor, particularly if you decorate or enhance a plain votive candleholder in some way to coordinate with your wedding.

Of course, you can forget having a unity candle at the ceremony altogether. Many brides these days are trying to reduce the length of the ceremony and spend more time planning the reception. In that light, some choose to do away with a unity candle altogether. You can certainly do this, or you can cut it out of the ceremony and make it part of the reception.

To do this, you can use the votive candle option suggested above, or you can simply incorporate the unity candle lighting into the reception activities themselves. For example, you might choose a quiet moment in the reception to have a lighting of the unity candle. It might be during a short prayer prior to the serving of the meal, or right before the cake is cut. In this case, the unity candle can then be used as decoration on the cake table. As the bride and groom cut the cake and pieces are served to guests, the candle can also serve as a reminder of the couple’s new bond and that the bond is shared with all the guests as well.

Although having a unity candle at the wedding or reception isn’t necessary, it is certainly an option that many brides and grooms opt to include. But it’s important to remember that as with so much surrounding wedding planning there are ways to make it unique and interesting and special to the couple getting married.