by Timmy Duncan

Created on: September 26, 2010

Wedding planning is one of the most stress filled processes in modern life. Throwing a great wedding costs an insane amount of money and requires a ridiculous amount of planning months, even years in advance. The bride and groom run around like chickens who have had their heads cut off, the mother and father of the bride are often just as crazy as they help their daughter plan for the biggest day of her life. One person seems to get off scott free in all of this chaos - the father of the groom.

While there has been a sort of "changing of the guards" in recent years in terms of who is responsible for what when it comes to planning a wedding, the role of the father of the groom has remained fairly unchanged - and fairly minor. Many couples today wait until they are older and more financially stable to make that important step to tie the knot. As a result, more couples are taking on more of the financial details themselves and therefore the father of the groom's role is sometimes even more miniscule than tradition suggests.

The tradition has always been for the bride's mother and father to pay for the ceremony and the reception and the groom's parents are responsible for the wedding rehearsal dinner for the wedding party. At one time that might have seemed like an even split, but in today's world, where weddings cost $30,000 on average, it is hardly a balanced split.

In some cases, the bride and groom are paying for the majority of the wedding themselves and the parents may offer to help out in the form of gifts. The bride's parents may offer to pay for the food and entertainment while the groom's parents may offer to pay for the alcohol. In other cases, the bride and groom pay for everything on their own and their parents may give them a significant monetary gift as wedding present.

Even in the ceremony and reception traditions, the father of the groom gets off pretty easy. The bride's parents have important jobs. They must give their daughter away and the father must walk his daughter down the aisle and dance with her at the reception. The mother of the groom must dance with her son to a special song at the reception. The father of the groom - he gets to sit back, relax and enjoy the show. Hardly seems fair, but that's the way it has always been.

Learn more about this author, Timmy Duncan.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.