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Wedding traditions...
Q:
My brother is getting married in May and was wondering about something.
His future bride’s
family lives out-of-town and my brother is paying for their airfare.
What is the proper way of doing this? Are the bride and groom obligated
to pay for out-of-town guests’ airfares?
Annette
A:
Though the dictates of wedding etiquette are rife with all sorts
of insane rules and regulations, paying for any/all guests to
travel out for the big day is not one of them. By no means is
the happy couple required to take care of the travel
requirements of out-of-town guests – the usual scenario is
that guests can expect to find and finance their own way to the
wedding. So forget about what propriety says – it’s just
very, very sweet of your brother to offer to fly out all his future
wife’s family members to ensure that they’ll be able to
share in the joy of the nuptials. No doubt he’ll be the
darling of all the relatives, who are sure to appreciate the
extraordinary generosity of the gesture.
Of course, it’s no small feat for your brother to
single-handedly take care of crafting the perfect itinerary for
each and every one of his future wife’s family members. And to
me, there’s something a little too business-like about telling
guests that they can book the tickets themselves and have him
reimburse the cost. The best solution, I’d think, would be for
your brother to enlist the services of a professional travel
agent, whom he could then ask each guest to contact directly in
order to arrange the details of the specific travel itineraries.
.
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But
let me offer an even easier solution for your brother: why not
offer to pay for the family’s local accommodations during the
wedding festivities and leave them to fend for themselves when
it comes to travel arrangements? It would be a lot easier for
him to book a block of rooms in a nice hotel – he should even
be able to negotiate a nice discount – than to cope with the
hassle of juggling flight itineraries.
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And he’ll
still be helping to alleviate some of the financial stress for
his bride’s out-of-town wedding guests, while also relieving
them of the burden of trying to decide on where to stay in a
town they probably know nothing about.
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