I am planning real early. We arent getting married until April 12, 2009! I am working on finding out how much everything will cost so when we ask out family for help we can have some figures. This way we know what will be taken care of and everyone can budget things early. What is the proper way to go about actually asking? If they cant help how do we keep them from feeling bad (if that happens!)? I am also trying to find who is actually (traditionally) suppose to pay for what.

The actual other issue: he hasnt gotten on one knee yet, but we know we are doing this and everything, but funds right now isnt permitting ring buying. Do we need to bring any of this up yet?

We started quietly planning befor the ring but we didnt say anything until it was official

If your man hasn't officially proposed yet, I would avoid asking for any financial help at this point.

Maybe mention the idea to your and his parents, but there is no reason at this point to ask for money help.

Once he does propose and you officially set the date, that is the time to ask.

The way I asked my parents:

"Mom, I would like your and dad's help for the wedding. If you can't help money-wise, that is fine, but I just need to know so I can budget accordingly."

If you're worried about your parents not helping, for whatever reason, this might be the way to ask. It worked for me!! Haha.

As for who traditionally pays, simply Google "wedding traditons who pays for what" and you should be able to come up with tons of webpages answering your questions.

Although, I would not worry about the small things in terms of "who pays." For me, bottom line, my parents are assisting me in paying for the wedding and his parents are taking care of the rehearsal dinner. Everything else (flowers, favors, etc.) is just getting taken care of, the best way we know how.

I would wait until you have the ring, and it should be fine since you're not getting married until 2009.

But honestly, this is what happened to us: We weren't going to get married until '09 either because my fiance and I were going to pay for the entire wedding ourselves and I have credit card debt and student loans to pay off. But when we told our parents that plan, they knew we wanted to get married earlier than that so we split the wedding costs three ways: his parents pay a third, my parents pay a third, and we pay a third. It's working out really well! So you should just talk to them about it.