Who Pays For The Bucks Party?
A fantastic question and one more people should be asking. First off, we recommend the answer not be ‘just you’ as depending on the event this can be the same cost as a small car, which would make a hell of a wedding gift. The short answer to this question is that everyone pays, but we’ll dig a bit deeper below, and we’re sure you’ll see our way of thinking.
Let’s tackle another great question first, ‘does the buck pay’? The answer is absolutely! Maybe! No! It really depends if we’re honest. Whilst this party is by you for the buck, to celebrate his special day and achievement, and give him a break, you can certainly raise the question of if he’s likely to help out with funding it. Many buck’s will say ‘sure’ and chip in,, after all it’s only fair. On the other hand, your buck might respond with ‘I’d love to, but I’ve just had to fork out $3000 on napkins’ which is also very fair. The best way to find out is to have a chat with the main man and see if he’s got anything left in the kitty to spare for the party, sometimes yes, sometimes no. The alternative is that the buck may want nothing to do with the party, having enough on his plate on the other end of things, or maybe it’s even a surprise party. So sit down with your mate and do some discovery to find out what he’s thinking.
With that out of the way, the normal answer to who pays for the buck’s party is everyone who’s going. Usually the best man will work out a cost per head for whatever he’s got planned (planning may or may not involve everyone, including the buck), which could be a day of activities, a night out, or a weekend at a seaside resort. From there, everyone invited will pay their amount and the party will kick off. We recommend, on the collection side of things, that the best man take everyone’s cash first and put it into a separate account. That’ll lock in who’s coming and give the best man a true indication of the budget, rather than having a whole bunch of people say yes, calculate the budget based on that, then have people drop out for every reason under the sun. We also recommend making it known that the cost is non-refundable, with many venues won’t refund if within a certain timeframe, this could be truer than if you’re just saying that so you don’t have to cut content that the others have signed up for, which is perfectly valid too.
The cost per head system doesn’t just apply to you, many venues will also have it the same way. This is where it can become a bit of a numbers game- often a venue will have a minimum cost per head, or a minimum amount of people have to be signed on to run the activity. Only once these minimums are met then the cost per head will start to go down the more people you add. Conversely, they may start to go up the more people you add, so contact the venue and see if they can do group rates. To that point we also recommend booking quite far in advance.
In very rare cases, you may find the in-laws or the parents of the buck might chip in as well, maybe without needing an invite too, so don’t be afraid to ask around for a bit of fundraising, this is for the buck after all.
So there’s the most common, and we think the most realistic, way of answering who pays for the buck’s party. You can also crowd source outside of your own connections or win the lotto maybe, these will also help stretch the budget a bit.
