My Husband and I Are Arguing Over How to Share Costs for Wedding Ceremony

The Yomiuri Shimbun

11:00 JST, March 29, 2026

Dear Troubleshooter:

I’m a woman in my 20s working in customer service. My husband and I submitted our marriage registration last autumn, and we plan to hold a wedding ceremony this spring for close friends and family. However, we are disagreeing about how to share the expenses.

We plan to invite about 25 guests, with a third of the guests coming from his side and the rest from my side. My husband was initially reluctant about the ceremony, but after visiting venues, he became positive about it. We discussed how to share costs, including whether a guest ratio split would be fair.

The other day, I proposed splitting the costs for food, drinks and wedding favors based on the ratio of the guests, while evenly dividing venue and photography costs. Then, my husband got furious, saying, “You said the guest ratio would be fine!”

He argued that I would get more monetary gifts, but to be honest, it won’t be enough.

I always thought he was stingy, but I worry that his penny-pinching attitude may persist, which makes me anxious about future pregnancy and childbirth. Is there a reasonable solution?

— H, Chiba Prefecture

Dear Ms. H:

Disputes over wedding cost sharing are common. Circumstances vary widely, and I don’t think there is any clear-cut standard for what constitutes a fair split.

As he suggests, the idea of roughly dividing all costs based on the guests does not sound entirely unreasonable. This is because the wedding you’re planning will be inevitably centered around you, with a strong element of announcing your marriage to your relatives and friends.

Your husband may feel that he is being dragged along even though he was initially reluctant about the ceremony. This seems slightly different from being stingy.

Of course, your argument for evenly splitting costs other than food and drink costs, which would change by headcount, is quite logical. But if there’s a fundamental difference in how you both view the wedding itself, it might be hard for him to accept.

Even when disputes arise over wedding expense sharing, most couples manage to compromise and overcome the problem. Could you find some room to compromise, such as trimming the overall costs a bit?

I hope that someday in the distant future, you two will be able to laugh about it together, saying, “We had a little argument over that, didn’t we?”

— Yoko Sanuki, lawyer