Hey guys, I'm really hoping I can ask my questions here and avoid getting flamed, but that might not be possible. But here goes nothing...
We started planning our wedding back in March for next May. FI is an only child and I'm like an only child in some ways to my parents as I'm the only girl and my 3 brothers are all much older than me (youngest one is 9 years older). Anyway, we knew the wedding would not just be important to us but also important to them. So we looked at many venues online, I crunched #s to compare the costs of throwing a traditional wedding DIY style versus doing it at a lower-end all-inclusive facility. We went to a place we loved and was on the lower-end of the all-inclusive places but its gorgeous. Catering will be $25/pp, alcohol will have a $1400 budget, rental fee for ceremony and reception is $1295, and waitstaff, bartender, all tables/chairs/chaircovers, sound system, etc is all included with the rental. Of course, you have to add on takes and gratuities as well, but you have to do this everywhere. We decided to run it by both sets of parents as I'm in school and cannot work full-time to see what they envisioned. My parents loved it but are not well off right now financially. FI's parents also liked it and offered to help contribute financially however they needed to. Perfect. We hoped to save $6,000 ourselves towards our $12,000 total wedding costs (For EVERYTHING) so we were participating in this too. His parents offered to put down the $1,000 deposit fee, but we ran all of this by both parents to ensure we made a choice in which we could feasibly financially do. If they hadn't offered to contribute, we would not have booked this location.
Fast foward -- May 2012 has booked quickly. All of our vendors have had dates book for the month already, and our wedding is on a holiday weekend also. So we again discussed financial contributions with both sets of parents. Mine gave a set amount and FI's parents just again agreed they'd help but no estimate of what that might entail. Weeks go by with no more info from FILs. Okay...so we approach it again and again they say they'd love to help and we explain that we do need to get an idea of what our budget is so we can make realistic decisions on what to put deposits down on. They say they understand and we don't hear from them again for weeks. His mom came into town for a business trip -- we tried to discuss it, and again we got nowhere except that they'd love to help.
I am SO beyond frustrated. It's been 2 months with no hint of a real response from FILs. I know now that we should have gone solely on our own savings, but back then when his parents offered us that and my parents offered us and said to move forward, we believed that and listened. Now we have no idea what funding we're getting and what we're not. If they had been unsure or honest upfront, I would have never, ever booked this venue.
I know at this point we honestly have to act like they aren't goign to contribute anything and try to scale back. We'll be $2,500 short, which we could put on a low-interest card if we had to, but I really did not want to do that. We are having a Friday evening wedding to save money on rental fees, but then that means we have to feed everyone dinner since many will be coming straight from work. I can't find another venue that offers tremendous cost-savings and we'd lose $1400 worth of deposits we've already made.
I need to know what you guys would do in this situation. I know we made a mistake counting on other people when they offered to help -- I just need to know what we should do now. I have no one else to discuss this with because FI is not interested in talking about it right now and I'm in full panic mode.
