Asking for cash gift instead of a gift list...

Set up a honeymoon gift list. It solves all your listed problems, and costs start at about £35 depending on the company.

Check this company out as an example. They have lots of samples for you to view, so you see what you think about the idea before committing to it.

http://www.buy-our-honeymoon.com/

I would be stunned if someone gave me their bank details to transfer them money. That is an awful suggestion. If you don't go with a honeymoon website, cash in a card is quite the norm at a lot of weddings, and I would be fine with that as a guest (although it's second choice for me, as first choice would be the website).

We wrote the following on our invites

"We have been together for a while and have a lovely home, there are not many things that we don't already own. So please don't be offended, and please don't think we are brash but if thoughts were on a oresent , we would much prefer the cash. But the choice is really up to you and we would like to say, that the best gift we could receive, is you here on our special day"

This is a hitched classic thread. The general consensus is that people will give you cash in the majority if you don't specify what you want. We got all cash and a few lovely hand picked gifts. Not a single toaster in sight.

say nothing and you will get given money- it's a fact.

I think bank details is a bit crass (as does asking for money in my cabbage)

money poems generally are considered a 'no-no' in these parts.

^^this^^ without a doubt. I was brought up that it is rude to ask for money as a gift - that doesn't mean you shouldn't, just that I was brought up that way. Because of that, I certainly could not put in a money poem or a request for cash.

However, we recognised that people do like to give a gift and there is nothing we need as we have lived together for four years and combined two homes into one anyway. We don't want cash - we aren't planning a honeymoon, so what would we spend it on?

So, as our wedding is on a budget, we have asked if people would be kind enough to provide a dish or two for the evening reception buffet - we don't care if they don't, just would rather have that than anything else so that they come, enjoy our party and celebrate with us.

We debated this long and hard. We only moved in together 10 months ago and as the flat was unfurnished, we had to start from the bottom up and there are still things we need. But I still felt like gift lists are kind of presumptuous and ungracious. We decided to ask for money towards a honeymoon instead, and I even set up a Honeyfund account, then when it came to actually submitting the wording for our invitations I had last minute doubts and ended up just not mentioning gifts at all. I think that if people want to give us anything it will be cash, and if not that's fine too.

We put a little card in the invitation pack that said we have everything we need as we already live together, however if anyone feels they really would like to give us something, we would appreciate a small gift of money to our honeymoon and hobbies fund. We worded it better than that and placed a huge emphasis on the small part of it.

I discussed it at length first with my Mum, my CBM and my H2B. They all agreed that was the best way forward. It was what my CBM did at her wedding too, and no one was offended.

However, when it came down to doing the invitations, there were many elderly relatives that I felt wouldn't understand and would feel obliged, so I left those cards out of their invites.

x

As a guest, I would much prefer to give cash or give to a honeymoon site. I'd be quite shocked I think if someone gave me their bank details to pay money into - it feels a bit untactful. We said nothing about gifts in our invites and from talking to my Mum and Dad most people are planning on sending us a cheque/cash.

Thank you so much everyone for your replies so far! All are extremely useful and giving us much food for thought!

I will continue to read and no doubt OH and I will discuss this in far more detail.

Much and truly appreciated. ?

Andrea de Gabriel

As a guest, it doesn't bother me if people ask for cash. I would prefer to receive a money poem (which IMO are awful) than bank details- I don't know why but I feel that putting bank details in an invitation feels more demanding.

Am I the only one not bothered about money poems lol. I have just attended my bosses wedding and my uncle in July. Both had money poems and I think they just another thing overdone in the wedding industry but I dont mind.

We were thinking of having one. We cant afford a honeymoon so money towards it would be great x

IMO it's crass to ask for money as a gift, even more so to do it in an awful generic poem. The next time I receive one of those poems telling me that they already have a toaster and a bin I may turn up with a toaster as a gift! I'm joking of course and I know I may be in the minority but those poems really grate on me. I think if you didn't mention anything about gifts most people will give money or will call your parents (or you) to see what you want in which case I think it would be better said at this time rather than asking for it up front.

^^^^ this ^^^^ although after reading a few "heated" discussions on here on the topic I decided to not mention it at all on our invites. HOWEVER, our invite lady kept sending through wording samples with something in them so I actually just went with "Don't feel obliged to buy us a gift, your presence on our wedding day is the most important gift that you could give us" so it had no "however, if you do want to....." After it and I still feel it's maybe a little cheesey but so far the only complaints I've had are from my sister and mother, who would find anything to moan at so I'm not tooooooooo worried lol!!!

i do agree with the ladies above about bank details though, I have absolutely no comprehensive reason why, but that just seems a little cold. Not even sure if that's the right word, but just not quite right if you get me?! :-/. It's one of the most stressful wedding decisions we've had to make!!! Lol xx

We made a joke of it.

Our invites have comedy value - So we said that we have no more room in our flat due to the meth lab in the spare room so if they wanted to bring a gift please bring unmarked cash, which is easier for us to launder..

Thank you all! I have read every reply and there are some great ideas there!

The only thing I feel I'd like to clarify (as it probably was not well explained) is that we were not going to put bank details on the invites.

We were going to open a dedicated savings account, (or something like that) to deposit any cash gifts and the account number would only be given to anyone who expressed a preference in making a transfer instead of giving cash or cheque.

I think the whole giving/asking for money is simply a cultural issue as far as perception goes. True enough that here it is still seen as perhaps cold or crass, but all our guests are people we know very closely as we are keeping it to immediate family and life-long friends who know us and understand why we'd prefer things this way.

If I was Greek this wouldn't even be a question! ? I photographed a Greek wedding a couple of years ago and, wow! I never realised how many £50 and £20 notes you can stick to a person! ??

Thank you all again

Andrea de Gabriel

We didn't put anything in our invites, nor on our website. X

no I don't mind them (and have used one) - I can understand why people who think it's wrong to ask for money wouldn't like them, but otherwise I don't really understand why they seem to grate on some people so much or why they are considered so much worse than requests in plain prose. Horses for courses I guess

Our gift list is fairly unconventional because we didn't want housey stuff, felt money was impersonal (in our opinion only, obviously) and are only managing a mini-moon so instead we've whipped up 'Wish List For Our First Year Together' and filled it with all manner of stuff - afternoon teas, restaurant gift cards, whisky tasting sets, a golf lesson, cinema gift vouchers, theme park tickets, etc. We did this because we wanted something totally different and also something with loads of different cost options - so our guests can buy anything from a £5 bottle of wine to 'stock' our winerack, to a restaurant gift voucher of their choice for the cost of their choice, to National Trust membership (£45) to tickets for us to walk over the Millennium Dome (£66) to one that we're desperately hoping a group might get together to buy - an up close and personal date with Mr and Mrs Orangutan at Colchester Zoo (£175)!

In the invitations themselves we put a brief note that gifts were not necessary but that if anyone wanted to buy something they could select from our wish list or buy us something else entirely! We then slipped the list in separately in the same way other people might with a registry card. I wasn't sure it was appropriate to begin with but mum and bridesmaids convinced me that the list was so well put together that our guests would think it was novel enough to break etiquette for!

My mum is coordinating it so we asked people to let her know what they're buying to avoid duplicates - and she's keeping our diary for the year after the wedding so people can choose specific dates if they're buying us tickets for things!

A reply to MrsBW, as I hope you pop back into the thread over the Bank Hol !

Can I just say that this sounds like the most laborious way to do this, ever. Obviously you may be keeping the reigns on the wedding budget, as I do realise that Honeymoon websites can be £35 - 65, which is of course an additional cost. However, maybe you've not heard of these websites, in which case please see my earlier post on this thread. You've already mentioned that you have a wedding website, in which case you could easily have a weblink on there that takes you straight through to your Honeymoon giftlist web page.

The reason why I was additionally very puzzled about your laborious plan, is that when MissWrite said later in the thread "I think if you didn't mention anything about gifts most people will give money or will call your parents (or you) to see what you want", you then replied:

"As a guest, I think I would find this a pain in the proverbial personally, as would my mum who would be fielding calls"

But you are expecting ALL of your guests to make telephone calls about your gift list, and expecting your MoH and Best Man to field them???

I have to say, I don't want to have to phone anyone up to either get 'crossed off a list' or to clarify if there even is a list. That is indeed a pain in the proverbial.

You'll end up with a great bunch of gifts to spread out throughout that first year by the sounds of it. I'd imagine you'd end up matching the gifts to seasons, such as going to the cinema on a cold wintry date-night, and the theme park on a summers day etc. Very imaginative and a lovely idea ?

Well that's just awesome !!! ?

I totally hope your wedding favours are those little bags of Breaking Bad blue candy?!?!

Well now, that's not what you originally said. You said people had to ring your MoH or your best man.

I agree that if people can email them instead, it's not much more hassle than a wedding website. It'd end up being 2 emails, as you'd send one email, wait for a response etc. But yes, in my eyes that's fine, I'd be happy to do that as a guest. It's phoning people and trying to get hold of them at a convenient time that is a pain in the proverbial.

Yeah, I did acknowledge the set up costs for the Honeymoon websites, and they certainly have to be taken into account when budgeting. If you're going to provide email contact details for the MoH / Best Man, I'm sure that will work out well, as long as they're willing and able when it comes to managing it all !

This is what we're doing - in fact we've set one up online through Hitched. I researched activities in the Lake District (our honeymoon destination) and have created a list based on those: row boat hire, ten lake tour, GoApe, steam yacht picnic cruise, Beatrix Potter's house, romantic meals for two, aquarium tickets, coffee stop on the drive up there, M&S picnic on the drive up there, etc.

We're not including it in the invitations though. The last two weddings I went to did, and I too was grateful for it, but my partner and my stepdad were not too keen on the idea, and I can understand that completely too. So if someone asks then we'll let them have the link!

We asked for nothing, we got cash. I don't understand the panic that sets in at the idea of receiving....shock....an actual gift, that people feel the need to be directive. And when you're being directive about people gifting you money, it's always rude. And if you're having a big budget wedding and spunking money on Jimmy Choos yet not offering your guests a bit of a free bar and STILL asking for cash gifts, my head starts to turn Exorcist style.

You could use one of those truly dreadful and would stop being friends with you poems - I gather this automatically renders the request perfectly acceptable....*

I once pondered a survey of OMs to see who asked for what, by which method, and what they received regarding cash gifts. I could work out average gifts per guest etc. i think this would thoroughly and comprehensively destroy this pervasive notion that you need to ask for cash in invitations in order to receive cash gifts.

OP, with specific reference to your situation, I'm not sure how useful a bank account would be. If a guest decides to gift cash (very likely, even in the absence of prompting, people not generally being stupid enough to by toasters these days), they probably aren't going to phone to check how Madam would like that cooked.

*This statement is, of course, not true. It is still as rude as ever - a poem just shows how keenly you feel that.

Haha that's a cool idea! We are big breaking bad fans so our guests would get where we were coming from if we did that!

We will probably just say nothing about gifts/money. We would prefer money for our honeymoon. All of our guests know that we have been living together for a few years now and we don't need anything. If anyone asks we will say we prefer cash and just let word spread...

I'm on the middle of the fence with this one. Not against the poems per se, and I find some more demanding than others (we've had 3 in the last year - First one I thought was cute, the second i found quite demanding in the way it was worded and the third didn't even register on my radar!)

Just out of interest, those of you against asking for money, are you also against gift lists in general? Or is just the fact of asking for money you find rude?

It's an interesting point, and I respect your view entirely. I'm sure you've come up with some lovely gifts in the past, and the honeymoon currency is always a sure winner.

I guess you made me think about something though, that hasn't occurred to me before. I've always liked 'the easy option' of buying off a gift registry, or contributing to a honeymoon, and not thought much of it to be honest. But in reality, is that 'the easy option'? I'm sure the bride and groom thought long and hard about their gift list, and what they would LOVE to be gifted, but also what they NEED to be gifted. Many people just can't afford a honeymoon if they don't make a honeymoon gift list, and many people can't afford to buy a new set of bed linen or towels and put up with old manky ones and just stare at them mournfully.

Anyway, it just occurred to me that buying off such registries can therefore be very thoughtful, and more thoughtful than going off-list with something else in some regards. Something that was off-list is likely a luxury item, rather than a 'needed' item (I use the word luxury as the opposite of necessary there).

As an aside, lists should never just have expensive items on them though, so they shouldn't be giving a hint of an expectation of what the guests should spend. And I haven't seen ones like that either. I've always seen gift lists with nice kitchen items that cost £5 (eg a quirky salt and pepper shaker set) right up to a few hundred pounds for a posh dinner service. I've always thought the more expensive items were there for the grandparents to buy, LOL, and have just bought what I could afford.

On the topic of registries, I just read this on another forum and it made me chuckle so thought I'd share:

"my mother hates them. If a registry is only filled with lofty fine china and $400 vacuums, she refuses to buy from the list, choosing instead to always give the same item: a $30 under-the-sink fire extinguisher, with a note reading "May you never have to use this".

It used to embarrass me, but now I love my mom's silent "eff you" to any overt gift grabs."

Nor is new bedlinen. Or towels.

I don't mind gift lists as much a money requests, but I would very happily ignore them, with zero feeling of guilt, if I had a better idea. I like shopping, I like picking gifts. Gift lists can be handy to get a feel for people like in terms of wall art/soft furnishings/cuteness etc.

What I hate about either is mention or inclusion in the invitation. Ugh ugh ugh.

I'm not so against gift lists. My mum always made us write, and still does, a gift list for our birthdays and Christmases. I do the same with my children. The understanding has always been that there is a price limit and we should put gift options of various prices on - sound familiar? Lol. I would heartily agree that lists should be made with all guests in mind, the poorer and those who are not close friends in particular and should be for things needed and things desired.

We have asked guests to bring a dish for the buffet rather than a gift and have had some lovely offers already. But we don't need anything for our home so a gift list for us would consist only of things we desired.

Btw honeymoons are a luxury, not a necessity and asking for one would not be right for us.

Another OM to dispel the myth that the absence of a gift list or money request means you will end up with loads of tatt you don't want. We in fact were living with my FIL when we got married so hadn't even set up home together, we asked for nothing and got mostly money, some vouchers and a couple of smaller presents, definitely didn't end up with 15 toasters. Most people wrote us cheques believe it or not so no worry about someone making off with it!

I think if you say nothing most people will give cash, they aren't idiots, they've been to weddings before, they know you live together, they know you don't need a cutlery set or egg cups. Yes you might get the odd phone call asking you what you want but just field it with 'we haven't got a gift list' and they'll still give you cash more than likely.

We never had a gift list, asked for money or expected anything but we did get 12 photo frames!!! lol

I couldn't bring myself to ask for any gifts when doing our invites. I left it blank, didn't mention anything. I felt so embarrassed that people are already shelling out enough money on hotels, travel, etc. I just couldn't put anything. And we're people who can't afford a honeymoon, don't have our own house and have just scrapped our car and can't afford a new one! Since the invites went out, a lot of guests have rung my mum to ask what we would like and my mum explained that we didn't want to ask for anything but they can give a little money or buy a little gift. Everyone has said how nice and tasteful it was to receive an invite that didn't mention anything about gifts!