Who should pay for the bridesmaid dresses?

There's a hot controversy whether the bride should pay for bridesmaid dresses now. Someone keeps the view that the bride is supposed to buy the bridesmaids' dresses while others insist that it's the bridesmaid's responsibility to buy the dress for herself.

It seems that traditionally bride pay for your bridesmaid dress, but now in most cases, bridesmaid should pay for their own dress. Today if the bride buy bridesmaid dresses, then the dress can be seen as her gift for bridesmaid. If the bride doesn't buy the bridesmaids dresses, then it would be appropriate for her to purchase them jewelry and possibly pay for their transportation from their home to the wedding location.

However, the reality is usually much more complicated involving many questions and the most common one is the economic problems. If the bride and groom are not wealthy and they are not willing to pay for the bridesmaid's beautiful one-shoulder bridesmaid dress, this is reasonable and you should accept it to buy it yourself as a bridesmaid. Even you think it's not your duty to buy bridesmaid dress, you'd better buy it by yourself.

Then if you are be invited to be a bridesmaid by your close friend and you can't afford the wedding for the time being, you can explain that your budget is tight in advance. Besides, you can  to be a reader or other important role instead if it seems like it will be an expensive event. In a word, there's no need to be bothered about this problem because your friendship with each other is worth far more than one-shoulder bridesmaid dresses.