I wasn't sure where to put this so excuse me if there is a better board for it but you guys always know what to do here. To be completely clear I have not asked my parents or anyone else to pay for any part of my wedding nor have I asked if they were planning on helping, nothing of the sort.
However.
FI and I got engaged last month with a rough idea that we would get married in a year and a half or longer to give us plenty of time to save up for the wedding and spread out costs. I'm pretty clueless with wedding planning but figured that would be an good economical decision. I had a feeling my parents would offer to help with some cost but my overall plan was to have a small budget wedding that FI and I paid for ourselves.
The first conversation I had with my dad after our engagement was him asking for a rough date and if it's gonna be a "big princess thing" (mostly kidding) so he could see how "prepared he needed to be to pay for the wedding". Cool. He then balked at the idea of waiting longer than a year to get married after the engagement so we decided on a year-ish long engagement, Spring 2017. This was cool with FI and I since my dad more or less said he's going to help pay and we are really excited to get married as soon as we can.
A few days ago my mom asked if I had started to look at venues yet and how many people I was thinking about inviting and I told her I'm not doing that until I know my budget and that my dad offered to help pay but hasn't given me a number yet so I was waiting on him and at that point she said that she "obviously" is going to help too but asked me to figure out my budget first and then said something about doing a 50-25-25 split "or something"?!
My dad has come up with venue ideas and when I've brought up cost he's said things like "it doesn't matter" bc the venue (he wants to rent a big house or estate so out of town guests can spend the night and we can have the ceremony and reception in one place) is the most important part.
This is where I'm confused. I don't want to ask them for X amount of money and I don't know my budget until I know how much they want to help. But both of them have been the most excited to start planning and locking things down.
My parents are divorced and remarried and I am their oldest and only child together, it's my first wedding so none of us have done this before. They both seem to have different ideas of how they plan to help but how am I supposed to navigate this budget conversation with them without asking for money or help?