Who pays for what?

Common and traditional =/= required or the responsibility of anybody other than the people getting married. Tradition is not etiquette; people can choose to follow tradition or not, as they like. It really doesn't matter that every person you know has gotten family assistance for their wedding. It's irrelevant to the choices and responsibilities of your FI's family (or your family, for that matter).

Everybody does things differently these days, and I don't think there's a "normal" anymore. I was very lucky in that my family and my husband's family split all of the wedding costs right down the middle and each contributed 50% (my husband and I paid for the rehearsal dinner and our honeymoon ourselves). But I realize that many people pay for their own weddings these days. We would have paid for everything ourselves, but then it would have been a casual micro-wedding since we didn't have that kind of budget...But it was important to our parents to throw a big fancy party, and they offered to pay.

Suggesting a wedding be postponed until the couple can afford it is VERY common advice every time budgeting comes up. Everyone has budget constraints, not just you. Part of being ready to get married is being mature enough to save money and work together with one's future spouse to set a realistic budget and make plans that are affordable.

So, since you are young and, apparently, without savings, you have two basic choices to afford the wedding you are planning: 1) cut back on expenses so that you can afford it now; or 2) push back the wedding date so you have more time to save.

As an aside, neither flowers nor a honeymoon are required for a wedding. So you could forgo both of those things if those are the final items that you can't afford.

Of course you can postpone. Re. your living situation, lots of people have roommates to help them cover the rent. You don't want to, which is fine, but since you don't want to, you need to make your wedding work with the money you have. It sounds like you ARE ready to go as long as you accept you can't afford flowers or a honeymoon. The good news is that you will be just as married without those expenses.

You are absolutely allowed to feel that being told to postpone your wedding is inconsiderate and drastic, but if you did any reading in this forum, you would see this advice comes up ALL THE TIME. It's not a personal attack on you.

As someone who is paying for my own wedding and currently unemployed (thanks COVID) and busting my ass to not have to cancel my wedding for budgetary reasons - I like you. Sound advice.

This is traditionally what I’ve always heard as well that the groom’s side covers rehearsal dinner and honeymoon and that the bride’s side covers the rest. Although no one from either of our families has offered to pay for anything except my mom as a side note when she heard later that I didn’t pick one particular dress because of its price made the comment that she could helped pay for it. There were other reasons why I didn’t choose that and it was the principal of the matter. I don’t see a purpose for spending that much on something I’ll hardly wear.

However, I’m not really complaining. This is his second marriage and his parents are retired. Also, my dad is kicking the renters out of the family homeplace and letting us live there, so I can’t complain if he doesn’t offer money for the wedding.

It depends on what you believe and your ideas of who should pay for the wedding. You should probably sit down and talk to them about it. Maybe there can be some compromise. My parents are paying for most of our wedding. We are paying for the photographer, dj, flowers, my dress, his tux, save the dates, invitations and the honeymoon. We are also paying for anything else that we are adding to the wedding such as uplighting for the reception. Good Luck