When to start talking turkey?

[Peter]

I think that this is a very delicate matter.... If you put the thing like this: All the money we can save at our wedding we can use buying our house / apartment later...All the money we can save will help our kids in the future to get a better life... I doesn't have the Nobel prize in understanding a woman but I think this will be a natural thinking for a woman who is starting a new life...
Like I wrote in Philip's thread it must not be very expensive. My wife told me that our wedding was about 25 000 yuan and we had 70 guests. It was a normal wedding in China..

[Philip]

Irish, don't worry.
I am sure I am the only one having to deal with this dilemma.
Doesn't make it easy for me, but at least I have her brother on my side.
She said 200000. I say 20000 (with her brother's endorsement)
If she has lost face through this, I cannot come up with the difference to restore it. She has lost some trust in me, but I have not changed in my feelings or in my intentions one little bit, so I have nothing to reproach myself for, except perhaps not telling her that I am not a rich man.
I have stood my ground and told her that I want to register our marriage in December, and have the wedding meal in April. She seems to have accepted this. I'll let you know when I see her on Tuesday. She may have taken a contract out on me and I may be in for a tough ride. Bigbutt, if you in Changsha, you may have to cover my butt!
There may be trouble ahead, but while there's moonlight and music and love and romance, let's face the music and dance.
So, Irish, take my situation as wholly unrepresentative. Forget about my freakish situation. Sunny is a whole other kettle of poisson. After your wallet experience, you can be assured that you have nothing to worry about with your little bowl of sunnyshine.

[Danny]

Danny,

I have got to disagree with you big time on this!! To agree with a sum of money totalling 200000RMB is just ludicrous to save her Face. She can have a more than good wedding for 2000 to 3000 Euros and even a lot less. There are plenty of Married guy's here now, that are not ignorant about such matters.

David

If that is what I said, or meant to say, then I agree with you. I did not mean to suggest that he agree with the 200,000 RMB sum. I would never agree to a figure like that. That is a marriage breaking amount of money in my opinion. If my YaYa demanded a marriage costing that sum, I would attempt to talk it through in the way I have suggested in my post, but if she insisted on spending that much money on a wedding I would not proceed with the marriage - not only because it is a waste of money, but for what it says about her.  

I just meant to say that the way of dealing with the situation would be to step back from the matter and consider it as a problem for the family as a whole, rather than just an argument about setting an arbitrary limit.

Thanks for your response.

Danny