How to guide: Asking your parents for money

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Asking people for money is always an incredibly awkward experience. Add on a pile of social and gendered expectations and you’ve got a maelstrom of uncomfortable assumptions. These days, many couples live together before they marry and are used to managing their own money together so they are choosing to pay for their own weddings, with contributions from their parents, rather than the old tradition of the bride’s father paying for the whole shebang. This means that asking your parents for a contribution can be an etiquette minefield.

If you’re mostly covering costs yourselves, my personal recommendation when initially setting your wedding budget is to try not to factor in what parents and others might be contributing. That way anything they give you will be a bonus that you don’t have to pay yourselves, which will save you money and you won’t get caught out if for some reason it’s less than you thought or than they originally advised. Don’t be tempted to count their contribution as expanding the budget and allowing you to really splurge! Remember there is a marriage at the end of all this that will need healthy finances to flourish. Anything you save on the wedding can be instead directed towards other savings goals like a house deposit or a new car.

Another recommendation: don’t ask your parents outright how much they are willing to give. In doing so you are essentially asking them to put a price on their love for you, and no parent is going to appreciate that. Instead, once you’ve figured out what the overall budget looks like and how much you can save, you should be able to ask them for a specific figure or even ask them to cover the estimated cost of a specific item, like the photography. That way they’ll feel less like an ATM and you can avoid serious embarrassment later if you make decisions they won’t agree with—it’s a lot harder to win an argument with your mum on the dress if she can say “well I’m paying for it”!

Keep in mind also that there are lots of etiquette rules around weddings and your parents might be working on an assumption without your knowledge. As an example, my parents thought they were going to be paying specifically for the food and were thus rather affronted when we mentioned we were considering a very fancy restaurant for the reception! Be upfront about your own expectations and ask them about theirs so everyone is on the same page.

Tips:

• You're not obligated to tell anyone how much the whole shebang is costing you. Yes, there will be people who ask.
• Make sure to pick the right moment for the money conversation. Try not to blindside anyone and don't let the conversation get derailed.
• Be prepared if you're asking for a high figure to justify the expense. "But it's my wedding!!" is not always enough of an argument. 

Lay off the bride

Note: this entry includes discussion of eating disorders and body issues. If you want someone to talk to about these topics, contact the Butterfly Foundation http://thebutterflyfoundation.org.au/

Here’s a fact about me: I am rather sensitive about my body weight. Wow, a woman with body issues, call the media! But seriously, it’s a hot button issue for me, mostly because of a perfect storm of weight gain as a teenager caused by moving to a different school at the exact moment when my paternal grandmother’s genes kicked in out of nowhere and turned this former weedy, lanky kid into a full-on pear shape. The fact that I continued to live on hot chocolates and baked potatoes and fundraiser box Freddos despite gaining two dress sizes from the age of 15 to 17 is testament to how blithely unprepared I was for a) puberty and b) lifestyle changes. After finishing high school, I joined a gym with my mum as a two-for-one special and discovered that, in contradiction to my nerdy bookish persona and the lessons of 12 years of Phys Ed, I actually like exercising! Thanks to the miracle of a teenage metabolism, even without pushing it that hard I dropped something like 10kg and went down a dress size in the three months between high school and starting uni.

This was awesome and made me feel really good about myself and what my body could achieve! However, like most fast weight loss success stories, I gained most of it back within the next 12 months thanks to discovering cheap beer and not identifying why I had gained the weight in the first place and making appropriate lifestyle changes. I went back up a dress size, and, aside from 5kg gained and lost as part of the coming of age ritual that is share house living, and despite flirtations with fad diets, the psychological lure of weight loss ads and extreme avenues of thought that if explored would most likely lead to a full blown eating disorder, there I have stayed.

The point of pouring out all this is to make the point that even though I am the statistically average size for an Australian woman, I have been bigger than I feel comfortable being for going on ten years now and am pretty darn sensitive about it, though usually in denial. Most people I know are fairly tactful so it’s usually not more than a devil on my back that rears its ugly head on the rare occasion when I read women’s magazines. I mostly just try to stay active, eat well and not think too negatively about myself in clothing store change rooms.

But a funny thing happened when I got engaged – all of a sudden everyone was saying to me “oh you’re not going to go crazy and lose a bunch of weight are you?” By virtue of a ring on my finger, suddenly my biggest taboo topic was on everyone’s lips. My fiancé and I have both noticed that weddings can be a complete psychological minefield to enter into and this was my first big mental landmine. The comments were well intended but (not surprisingly) very unwelcome. Like many brides before me, I’m honestly not comfortable in my own skin and I have decided to use the motivation afforded by the Impending Wedding Photo Deluge to actually get my act together and do something about it already.

This may all sound very superficial and buying into the IWC and it probably is. But is it really such a crime to want to look at your wedding photos and not cringe? It’s my damn body, I can do what I want with it and that includes trying my best to (healthily and sustainably) drop a few kilos and kick the devil to the curb.

But, in rebuttal to those initial comments, I haven’t turned into a hardcore Paleo Crossfit evangelist. I have simply gotten more active, by by going more often to the gym and going to fitness classes to push myself in a fun environment rather than simply hitting the tredmill five days a week. I am also practicing ‘conscious eating’, whereby instead of mindlessly shoving food in my face hole, I plan out meals (so no opportunity for last minute decisions for chips and gravy for lunch), I keep a food journal, and I actively participate in the act of eating to stop when I feel full. I like it because it’s not a “diet” and doesn’t involve calorie counting (which I always give up on). I’m just being aware of what (and how much) I’m putting in my mouth. My fiancé is very much not interested in living with a cranky girl on a diet, so this works for both of us which helps to keep me on track.

I’ve already lost five kilos since our engagement which honestly feels like winning a gold medal. I’ve got three months left to the wedding and three kilos to my goal weight. Most importantly I’m feeling confident and motivated because I’m not doing it to fit into the dress; I’m doing it to feel good wearing it. So, please, keep your damn comments to yourselves.