Mom wants a fancy wedding and Dad can’t pay

Times are tough, and let’s face it, lots of people are broke. That makes it hard to pay the bills and buy nice things like Amish space heaters, and it makes it more difficult than ever to handle social situations involving money.

We asked for your questions about the etiquette of being broke, and Ask Alana has some answers. This month: how divorced parents can pay for a wedding if one of them doesn’t have much cash; whether to have a housewarming when you’re basically broke; whether it is unethical to make your friends contribute to a potluck if they’re out of luck financially.

Dear Alana: I am the groom in an upcoming wedding and my parents are divorced. During this tough economic climate, we are proceeding with a pretty nice wedding. I am the only child, so my mother is very excited about the wedding, especially the rehearsal dinner. Needless to say, she wants to make it a night we will never forget, and that will more than likely come with a high price tag. My father cannot afford to split the cost of what my mother is looking to spend. Having been married for 25 years before divorcing six years ago, my father should know how my mother will be about this. However, since my parents no longer speak to each other, I will be forced to be a mediator between the two of them in planning and paying for the rehearsal dinner. How should I approach this situation and what is the proper amount I should ask my father to contribute?

Justin from Georgia

Dear Justin: First of all, to save yourself time in the future, “I am getting married” is a much more succinct phrase than “I am a groom in an upcoming wedding.” Just FYI. Ink is expensive these days, you know.

Anyway, this is one of the many perils of having divorced parents. There are many versions of this question, and all equally difficult: My parents are divorced and my father wants pickles at the wedding and my mother wants cucumbers. My parents are divorced and my father likes samba for our first dance and my mother insists on the robot boogie. My parents are divorced and my mother is in a heavy metal band with her new lover, and she wants to play the wedding. Gah!

Your situation is especially touchy because it’s about money, and financial situations are difficult even without divorced parents, upcoming nuptials and the worst economy since the days of Little Orphan Annie. I don’t know how much your mother wants to spend to make this rehearsal dinner the night of your life, but if your father can’t afford it, it’s no fair asking him to mortgage his second home so you can have the Jonas Brothers singing “We Got the Party” the night before your wedding.

“They should first figure out how much money each party is contributing, and then plan the party from there,” said Robyn Goldberg, owner of Los Angeles wedding planning firm Robyn Goldberg Weddings & Special Events. She recommends sitting down with your father and figuring out how much he is able to spend, or whether he’s able to spend anything at all. Go back to your mother with that figure and present it as nonnegotiable.

If that’s awkward, you could suggest that your mother pay for the rehearsal dinner on her own and your father be responsible for something else entirely. If your bridal party is planning on getting tanked after the rehearsal dinner, maybe he can provide the booze, for instance.

It’s got to be awkward and stressful to plan an event with the two of them if they’re not speaking, so it might be a better strategy to divide and conquer. And although it is traditional for the groom’s parents to pay for the rehearsal dinner, it’s also traditional for people to save themselves for marriage, send correspondence by snail mail, and cook macaroni and cheese not in the microwave but on the stove(!).

Times change, Justin, and as the groom in an upcoming wedding, you’re certainly allowed to change with them.

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Dear Alana: My husband and I are buying a new home. Seeing as how the economy is shot and we do live in Los Angeles, I’m wondering how long we have after we move in to host a housewarming party and how extravagant it needs to be. I want to show off the place and I don’t want to offend any of our friends by not inviting them, but we are spending all our money on the house and don’t expect to have extra spending money for a while. Any suggestions?

Amy from Los Angeles

Dear Amy: I don’t know what kind of housewarming you go to, but in my experience, the winner at these events is generally the host. You provide some cheap wine and cake, and your guests bring you a medium-sized plant, bottle of wine or pepper grinder as a gift. A little while later, they leave green with jealousy, extolling your house on the drive back to their cockroach-infested apartments, where the upstairs neighbors specialize in dropping dumbbells on hardwood floors in the middle of the night.

My point is, don’t fear the housewarming: Embrace it and its many potential benefits (read: gifts). You could even throw a couple of lines in the invite saying, “Come and see our new house. We still don’t have everything we need (like a pepper grinder), but we’d love to host you anyway.”

If that feels a little forced, Lisa Cabanes, the founder of Social Couture, a Los Angeles party website, suggests asking guests to bring food and drinks, a kind of housewarming potluck, instead of gifts.

“People have a better time if they can participate,” she said.

Send an invitation asking your friends to come see your house, and ask them to bring a dish in lieu of a gift. Then all you have to do is supply the booze. If you feel guilty about asking them to bring food, make sure they understand that you want the food instead of a housewarming gift, not in addition to it. Bringing food instead of a gift will probably save them money.

But before you do that, ask yourself, would you really rather they bring a tasteless pasta dish than a medium-sized plant or pepper grinder? Methinks the pepper grinder has more lasting value.

If you’re really strapped for either friends or cash, you don’t have to have a housewarming party at all, Cabanes says. You could postpone it until you win the lottery or the economy turns around, whichever comes first. In my experience, people are always postponing their housewarmings anyway, giving flimsy excuses like, “We have to finish the fourth bathroom first” or “We are waiting for Michelangelo to touch up our ceiling murals.”

I think that in this economy, people will understand if you postpone the housewarming, especially because they won’t have to send me questions about whether they really have to buy you a gift.

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Dear Alana: Is it cool to host a potluck and BYOB event when everyone knows you’re very blessed financially? Many who are invited to the event are not nearly as financially secure as the hostess.

Judy from Hawthorne

Dear Judy: There are times when a potluck is a good idea: if you have friends from many corners of the globe and want them to taste one another’s cuisine and thus bring about world peace. If you are a minister and want to dine with your congregation, but barely have enough money to keep your house of worship from being turned into a hip gastropub. Or if you just bought a new house and want your friends to see your abode but don’t have the money to spend on food.

In most other situations, though, I think potlucks should be avoided, especially if the host has large sums of money in the bank or mattress. Why ask your friends to bring food if you are financially blessed and they are a financial mess?

“The gracious thing to do when you can afford it is to tell people not to bring anything but themselves,” said advice guru Amy Alkon, who has a book coming out in November about the collapse of manners. You don’t want to rub your financial situation in their faces by serving caviar-coated foie gras on gilded plates, but you can have a classy affair with sandwiches or a 12-foot sub and not ask your friends to spend a dime.

Now I realize, of course, that there might be a reason someone might want to have a potluck. If so, it’s not terrible to ask people to bring something. Cheese and crackers cost only a few bucks, cheap wine masquerading as nice wine abounds, and even salad can be made for less than $10. Make sure that your worst-off friends are responsible for the appetizers.

But before you do that, think about whether you really want your guests to make food and bring it to your house. Will they label you tightfisted? Will they sneeze while making their banana flambe and give everyone the whooping cough? Will they leave their platter in your kitchen and force you to keep it until the next time you see them, even if it doesn’t match your china?

I think that on balance, if one is wealthy, it might be better to scrap the idea of a potluck and go ahead and order that 12-foot sub.

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By this time next month, efficient readers will have gotten their tax refunds, and just might be flush in cash. Some of you (like Judy’s friend) already are. What’s the etiquette of having money in a down economy? Can you still have your son’s bar mitzvah on a replica of the Titanic or will people consider it tasteless? Can you get your brother a really expensive birthday present if he can’t even afford to buy you a ShamWow? Is it wrong to spend your tax refund on a Snuggie instead of vegetables for your kids? Send questions to askalana@latimes.com.