Who Pays For A Cancelled Wedding?

By Amy E. Feldman

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) - Ah love. It's the height of wedding season. Just wondering: who has to pay and what are you legally responsible for if your wedding gets called off?

According to Reuters, the average cost of a South Korean wedding - where candid discussions of what a person can afford are taboo and pre-wedding gifts between families can include mink coats and diamonds - has risen to $200,000 - more than four years worth of the average salary.

Even without requisite diamonds for your in-laws, here in the US, the invitations, the hall, the food, the flowers, and the music - even the chaplain - cost money. But if the wedding doesn't happen someone still has to pay. Who?

Fairness says it should be the one who broke the engagement; the law, though, says it's the one who signed the contract.

If you are getting cold feet, the time to call it off is before you sign on the dotted line. And if you find that your name is all over the payment schedules but your beloved's is nowhere to be seen, it may seem unromantic if not taboo to ask yourself why you're on the hook alone, but better that than finding yourself stuck with the bill.