I knew I wouldn't be able to make it through this final week without coming to you ladies for some of your patented awesome advice.
When FI and I got engaged, my father told me that he intended to pay for the wedding because it was the bride's father's responsibility - and although he's not generally traditional, that he intended to be traditional about this. I carefully asked him what sort of budget we were looking at, and he he said he thought he could go as high as $3000. Knowing my dad, this was not so much a statement of "times are tight; you'll have to have a frugal wedding," but rather a statement of "I legitimately have absolutely no idea what things cost nowadays." That said, though, he IS retired, and although he's comfortable, the money is certainly not pouring in. We thanked him profusely, and then planned the wedding based on his gift of $3000, the gift of $3000 that FI's parents generously gave us, and an amount that we were willing to pay ourselves to round everything out.
Instead of giving us the money outright like FI's parents did, he wanted to see general amounts as we went along and to write us checks to pay those items off. i.e.: "We got the dress and booked a baker this weekend. The dress cost $825 and the baker is going to cost us $400. Please write us a check for $1225." All along, I've been keeping a full itemized budget with the prices of every item we've purchased, the estimated prices of every item we want but haven't yet purchased, and (to make myself feel better) the cost that the average Detroit spends on that sort of item (based on an excel file I spent waaaaayyyy too much time putting together, based on the stickies here).
So here's my problem: 2 weeks ago, he asked to see the final budget. I sent it to him, making a comment about how I know that the total ($11,000) looks really high, but it's not as bad as it looks because there's the $3000 from him and the $3000 from Jeremy's parents, and, hey, look, look how much less we spent than the average Detroit bride! I mentioned these things because (a) I care about his opinion of me and don't want him to think that I'm a crazy spendthrift, and (b) I wanted him to understand that we have an extra source of money and aren't going to go into debt over this, because he has occasionally in the past swooped in and just paid a huge bill outright when an unexpected expense popped up (double root canal, anyone?). I didn't want him to feel like he had to do that here.
So I just got an email from him: he's written us a $6000 check. That's double what he originally said he was going to give us. Now, don't get me wrong. I'm a selfish money-grubber. I want to take the money.
But I'm not sure how to go about this. My brain feels like when someone offers you money, you have to protest. Like it would be rude to just take a bunch of money without making a lot of noise about how they don't have to do that, and it's so amazing of them, and no I couldn't possibly...blah blah blah, before finally giving in and accepting it. But it's recently been brought to my attention that maybe I'm hurting his manly pride when I initially refuse to take money that he's offering to me as a gift. And that that is rude in and of itself. So how would you approach this?