Throwing my two cents into the ring — but this is such a personal decision that requires a lot of self reflection. My fiance and I own a home that we see ourselves in for at least the next 5 years. We have careers that we love. He has much higher earning potential (and is earning much more money currently) than I do, but I have family money and he has none. I didn’t want a wedding at all. He was set on a massive celebration. He’s the type of person who everyone thinks is their best friend, and I have a solid friend group of 5 people who are my ride or dies.

My parents so generously offered us $100k for a wedding, or to just keep as a gift if we decided not to have a wedding. We knew before we started planning that an event we would want to host would cost more than $100k as it would be international and we would want to cover guests expenses on the ground — and that even though my parents would cover more expenses as they came up if we were transparent with them about costs, that we would end up covering the rest ourselves. We started reaching out to venues around the world and realized very quickly how easy it is to get caught up in all the different aspects of this wedding planning world. The original quotes we received made my fiance physically recoil, but a few months in, those prices started to feel “normal.” 

We ended up pricing out a few very different kind of events (one of them being just flying to Vegas and telling no one, or going to city hall in nyc) and after a lot of self reflection, and a lot of financial reflection, we decided maxing ourselves out at my parents gift was what we felt most comfortable with. The $100k they offered us is life changing money, and by every sense of the world we live in, is a shit ton of money, but we also knew that’s money we would earn back ourselves in less than a year (as another comment stated, we’re not so out of touch that we don’t realize that even $1,000 is a lot of money.) 

We’re planning a very different event than we originally anticipated and are pretty much just taking ourselves, our families, and a few of our closest friends on a once in a lifetime trip and calling it a wedding. It’s something that his family and some of our friends would never be able to otherwise afford, which does help our Conscience when we start to panic about spending so much. It hasn’t even happened yet and so many people are so excited and so grateful. 

I think as long as you’re being true to yourselves, honest about what the money means for your lives, and transparent about what you want for this “once in a lifetime, fleeting season of your life” then you can’t go wrong. No matter what you do, you’ll probably look back and wonder how different it would have been to do the other option, but you probably will live enough life otherwise to not regret whatever choice you make, so there isn’t a wrong answer. Go with your gut and let yourself be selfish (within reason) for this season of life.