Parents paying for weddings

A parent can gift up to €3,000 tax free in any give tax year (it's per parent so max possible of €6,000), above that will require the payment of CAT. Not many people here are going to give you advice on tax evasion considering it's a criminal activity.

Gotcha, going by what @Pawwed Rig said, she should be able to gift the spouse as well which I had forgotten you could do.

Both our parents gave us a cash gift for our wedding, they just transferred money into our account. As far as I'm aware, there's no need to inform revenue that its for the purposes of the wedding or anything like that, or for them to directly pay the venue to prove it was for the wedding.

My memory (we looked into it because we were buying a house at the same time and they kindly gave us some money for that too) is that if you are given a certain high % of your tax-free threshold you're meant to inform revenue, but from a parent that threshold is literally hundreds of thousands. So, if she was giving her 200k, that might be an issue, but if she wants to give her 10k towards her wedding, there's absolutely no issue with it just being a cash transfer. Or, if she wants, her paying for the wedding dress, or paying for the venue directly.

Equally as other people have said, if she wants to give 10k total she could give 3k in 2021, 3k in 2022, and the remaining 4k towards the wedding in 2023, if it would be more convenient for all of them to have the money now to spend on other things as 3k would be in the annual gift allowance amount. And if her and her fiancee have joint finances, she could given them each 3k a year, doesn't need to be declared.

Hi OP

Weddings paid by parents on behalf of children are considered exempt from gift tax - see link below from Revenue. Probbaly best to allocate specific costs of the wedding to your mother, so that it's in her name. I've also added the paragraph highlighting the exemption

Guide to the CAT Treatment of Receipts by Children from their Parents for their Support, Maintenance or Education (revenue.ie)

Cost of Family Functions Paid for by Parent The costs of a family function such as a wedding paid for by a parent. Revenue takes the view that this is the expense of the parent rather than a gift to the child. Therefore, there are no gift tax implications. This extends not just to the cost of catering for guests but also to all of the costs associated with the occasion. However, a gift such as a car, a house or a paid holiday is still a gift for gift tax purposes, notwithstanding the fact that it may be associated with a family occasion such as a wedding. To the extent that any such gifts do not exceed the €3,000 small gift exemption in any year, they are not subject to CAT