How much should the bridesmaids be paying on the bachelorette
I am attending a bachelorette of a close friend in April. Here’s the problem. We just finished booking everything. Hotel, events, dinners, etc. many of these are prepaid activities and events, so the maid of honor who did the final booking just sent us all how much we owe.
When I looked at the breakdown, I noticed that a lot of the event prices were more than what we had okayed. Example, the Airbnb was supposed to be $350 per person splitting between everyone including the bride, but the final invoice said it was $390. Which isn’t much, but when you add that up across several events and payments, it came to be about $200 extra.
I inquired to MOH and she said that the extra dollars were to cover the bride’s share of the cost. Meaning that the bride is essentially having everything paid for except her flight. We never discussed or agreed to this.
The bachelorette is destination, a 4 hour flight away and plane tickets because it’s peak season for this place were upwards of $600 round trip. All in, the trip will cost a little over $1.5k when all is said and done with activities and food.
I’m not opposed to covering some drinks for the bride or even a portion of her hotel. But covering every event plus the maid of honor wants to put a gift together that will cost everyone about $30 each seems a little much.
This is only my second bachelorette. The first was largely actually covered by the bride’s parents who generously paid for all our activities and we just paid for our flights and hotel. I understand this is not the norm.
I am asking for advice on a. How much is normal to be expected, if it is the whole trip, please tell me. And b. If this isn’t normal, how do I broach this with MOH. I budgeted exactly for what we had planned when we initially planned it and covering the bride’s share was not in that plan. I also expect other expenses will pop up as we haven’t even paid for drinks or other meals yet. If it’s expected, I’ll make it work, but I just want to know if I should expect this at future bachelorette parties I’m invited to.