Wedding etiquette for witness's clothes for Civil Ceremony

At my first wedding my witnesses were my chief bridesmaid and the best man, who were obviously already dressed for the occasion at our expense.
If you are having one of your guests as a witness then I would say no, you shouldn't be expected to pay for their outfits, they wouldn't need to wear anything different than they would wear as a guest.

Our wedding will be a civil ceremony and our witnesses will probably be our mothers, but we won't be paying for their outfits.

HTH

I have never heard of anyone paying for their witnesses outfits, unless as was said earlier they are a bridesmaid, ,

We had a civil ceremony for our 2nd wedding and it wouldn't have crossed my mind to offer. They wore what they wanted for the wedding as any other guest

It would'nt cross my mind to offer we too are having a civil ceremony but my moh and the best man are our witnesses they are already dressed in outfits we have provided x

We paid for suits for our witnesses, BUT only because they were our brothers and had no other role and we wanted them to feel special and included. Their suits matched our dads and the groom & best man.

Had we gone down a different route and had other people as witnesses, we probably wouldn't have paid for their clothes.

We generally went by the rule "if we decide, we pay; if they decide, they pay" i.e. if we chose something like dresses then we would pay for them but if we gave people free choice over what to wear, then they could pay for it.

Yup, unless you are dictating what they should where i don't think there is any need at all.

Thanks eveyone for your great feedback again. You never let me down

I hadn't considered paying until someone (not the witnesses) asked the question and I immediately said no. But later I started to think that maybe it was expected. So thank you for the clarification.

Soozie

xx