Daughter Says $20,000 Wedding Budget Her Parents Allotted Isn't Enough While Threatening To Elope

Jun 08, 2021 by apost team

While it’s a cliche that the most important day of your life is your wedding, there’s some truth to the time-worn saying. For many, it’s a day that symbolizes a new chapter in their lives, signaling the beginning of true adulthood and a commitment to stay with someone for the rest of their life. It’s, therefore, no wonder why couples put in months, if not years, of effort into planning the perfect wedding. With that said, some couples can go a bit over the top, which is why words like “bridezilla” — a woman who obsessively plans a wedding to a fault — exist.

Sometimes, however, a bride's actions can cause a debate as to whether her demands really are in the "bridezilla" territory, or if a bride may actually be right about a controversial topic. Many issues are not as straightforward as they might first seem, and this was the case for one woman who turned to the internet to solve a problem. 

One of the most polarizing issues at a wedding is the budget, which different people have different ideas about. For some, eloping and not having a ceremony to pay for is the best way to show their love for each other, while for others, a grand ceremony is the right way to go. For one woman, her parents brought down the initial budget they gave their daughter from $40k to $20k. 

This led her to wonder if the wedding was even worth it, especially after her mother began to get more controlling, so she threatened to elope if she did not get her way at her wedding. 

The unnamed woman outlined her problem on the Reddit sub "AITA," where she wrote, "I’m recently engaged and I’ve started planning my wedding. I’m the only girl and my parents make good money (about 450k yearly) so they’ve always said they’d pay for my wedding when I decide to get married. I set my budget around 25k and started getting estimates on venue, photographer, videographer, etc."

However, her father had a different idea for her wedding and instead told her that she could have a $40k budget instead "so I wouldn’t have to stress about diy-ing the whole thing and enjoy the planning process," she continued. However, the bride-to-be's mother also started to get involved in the wedding planning process, which did not sit well with the daughter.

Her mother asked her to cut corners with her vendors, and added, "My mom has also gotten estimates of how much her friends paid for their daughters' weddings (all of which were over 25k) and agreed they could swing that financially." 

However, once other estimates came in, the bride's parents cut the wedding budget in half, telling the bride to make do with $20k instead and "backtracked" on their original promise. The bride explained, "I wouldn’t be so upset with them had the budget been 20k from the beginning but it seems as if they pulled that number out of thin air."

For the woman, this cut in her budget along with her mother's meddling was just too much. She detailed the ways in which her mother overtook her desires for her wedding. 

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She said her mother was "pushing me to use vendors her friends used instead of me finding people my that fit my style (she wants a southern barn wedding, I like more modern elegance)," and spending $3000 on my dress and veil, which left the bride with $17k instead of the original amount. 

"Another issue I have is they have no problem buying baseball tickets for $200 piece and spending $100+ on dinner multiple nights a week. They also just bought one of my younger brothers a car (he’s in his junior year of college)," the woman added. She was essentially incensed to have less money than originally intended for her, and annoyed that her parents wouldn't budge on their decision. 

"My fiancé and I are long-distance and will be until we’re married and when I told my mom I’d rather elope than dance around a wedding budget and not be able to enjoy my day, she flipped. She’s pretty much refusing to let me elope and when I told her to plan the wedding herself because she’s being so picky, she had a problem with that too."

This was a lose-lose situation for the bride, but she turned to Reddit for advice. While many comments supported the bride and told her that her parents' actions were not right, some others called her entitled for wanting more than the already substantial $20k. Many others also agreed with the bride that her mother was extremely unreasonable for being so pushy about a day that was not about her. 

While there have been no updates about what the bride eventually decided to do, it is clear that this story has many differing opinions from people. 

Do you agree with what the bride thinks? Have you had an experience where a wedding budget has caused a major problem for a wedding? Tell us about it, and be sure to ask what your friends think about this story as well.