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"This Save the Date reader can&amp;amp;#8217;t get over her cousin&amp;amp;#8217;s gall--he&amp;amp;#8217;s really hitting up friends and family (and not just the usual suspects!) to help pay for his wedding. Check out her mini-rant. &amp;amp;#8220;I need an opinion. I&amp;#x27;m from Houston, TX, and my cousin is getting married this October. The couple has asked for sponsors for the wedding. My father, unlike my mother, actually gave them money! And this past weekend, they held a hamburger fundraiser to help with the cost of their wedding. My cousin sent out mass text messages and updated his Facebook status to ask people to come support them. And all the money is going toward their wedding. Isn&amp;amp;#8217;t this tacky? Have you ever heard of this?&amp;amp;#8221; Here&amp;amp;#8217;s what I think: Having wedding sponsors is a tradition in some Latin-American cultures. The female sponsors are known as madrinas and the male ones as padrinos, and they serve as a financial and emotional support system for the couple (and are supposed to be there for them after the wedding, too). So if this is your cousin&amp;amp;#8217;s or his fiancee&amp;amp;#8217;s background, his requests may be totally acceptable to the people&amp;amp;#8217;s he&amp;amp;#8217;s coming to for help (though it obviously wasn&amp;amp;#8217;t to your mom!). I know it seems outrageous that he&amp;amp;#8217;s flat-out asking for people to pay for his wedding. Keep these in mind: You don&amp;amp;#8217;t have to help (and your dad didn&amp;amp;#8217;t, either), and desperate times call for desperate measures (even the simplest of weddings still cost a few grand). I&amp;amp;#8217;m not sure how logically hamburger fundraisers fit with weddings, but hey, you gotta do what you gotta do. I don&amp;amp;#8217;t know that I would broadcast that I&amp;amp;#8217;m in need of sponsors via text message and Facebook, but at least he&amp;amp;#8217;s being honest about his intentions. How much ickier would it be if your cousin was going around telling people that the profits from the hamburger fundraiser were going to charity? As long as your dad&amp;amp;#8217;s not putting himself or his family in a bad financial situation after contributing to your cousin&amp;amp;#8217;s &amp;amp;#8220;cause,&amp;amp;#8221; then I think it&amp;amp;#8217;s fine. I hope your cousin asked your parents because he feels close enough to them and not because he thought he was entitled to their hard-earned cash. If this tradition isn&amp;amp;#8217;t part of your cousin&amp;amp;#8217;s or his fiancee&amp;amp;#8217;s culture, then yeah, tacky to the max. He should save up money himself (or see if his parents or even grandparents want to pitch in) or do the wedding on the very, very cheap. Do you think it&amp;amp;#8217;s fine to ask for wedding sponsors? Are hamburger fundraisers more suited for sending the high school marching band on a trip? Would you ever contribute to a friend or relative&amp;amp;#8217;s wedding fund?"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.glamour.com/weddings/blogs/save-the-date/2010/06/rsvpeeved-my-cousins-asking-fo>