I need to hear from other mothers/dads who have had their boys get married.

What did you pay for? How did you pay for it? Did you just give them the money and say "do as you want with it" or did you write out the checks as you went along to pay for things.

I am kind of upset. My future daughter in law and son came over Sunday night (we asked them over) so we could discuss their upcoming wedding next September, and to surprise them with an announcement that we wanted to help pay for their wedding-further than what I had read was our responsibility .

Future DIL is only planning a $2500-5000 wedding. We were told by the future DIL that her father was paying for it all, so our money was not needed, however she wants for us to pay for the honeymoon.

She said she wanted to go on an Alaskan cruise for $6000.

WHAT??

Then dh said we would love to give them $2000 towards the wedding and included in that was a $500 Wedding gift (so basically $1500 towards the wedding and $500 as their gift). He then said they could use it how they pleased, but out of that money would be any responsibilities we would traditionally have for the wedding (they are not having liquor at the reception, so we are only to pay for the Rehearsal dinner-which we determined would be about $575). So basically, they would have about $1000, plus if they wanted to use their wedding gift with it.. $1500 towards a honeymoon.

Me, I would have been ecstatic! Her and my ds? Disappointed!!! They never once said Thank you.

Dh and I were floored. I was kind of hurt. I mean, that is not chump change and we were very excited to tell them that we wanted to help financially. It is a lot for us to do right now while putting our oldest through College....but we feel it is something that we would do for all of our boys.

How would you feel and would you have done anything differently (hence the etiquette question!) ?