Gifts - Is it okay to ask for money?

I know its a bit of a subject on here as to whether you should ask for money or not but I think alot of couples do this now and alot of guests prefer it as its easier for them and they would prefer to know rather than having to ask!

I'm just going to put something like " To have our amazing family and friends together for one whole day is a gift in itself, however if you would like to get us a little something as a wedding gift, a gift for money for our honeymoon pot would mean such alot!"

You'll get people saying you shouldn't ask for money or that you shouldn't do money poems but I think it's completely up to you what to do and I don't think people will be offended as it's the norm these days.

Hi,

we're also asking for honeymoon donations and we're not on the property ladder yet so can't ask for house gifts even if we wanted to (we still live with my parents)

We're going to our local Kuoni store tomorrow to discuss honeymoon ideas with them and I believe that they have a donation system whereby they give you cards with a personalised number on them that you pop in with your invitations for people to donate to your honeymoon fund, trailfinders also offer this. I would then just pop something onto the invitation along the lines of- if you'd like to give us a present we'd really appreciate a donation to our honeymoon fund and people will find the card & go ahead and donate. We did go to a wedding last year where you literally just donated straight into the bank account of the groom for the honeymoon donation which I personally didn't have a problem with as I assume it was to avoid commission from using a hosting site like honeyfund or prezola, but I can see why some people wouldn't feel comfortable doing this.

Most weddings I have been to in the last few years just have not had a gift list. The assumption is they want money. This is what we are doing, and telling parents that if anyone asks, we would like contributions towards honeymoon. I think most people expect to just give money these days. You can have your parents actively tell people you want honeymoon funds, at least this way it isn't coming from you.

I never understand why this is an issue - I can't see that asking for money towards a honeymoon is any ruder than saying "buy me this coffee maker" or whatever!

My partner and I have registered for a honeymoon site and I think every wedding we've been to recently have done the same i.e. No gift required but if you want to give something, a honeymoon donation would be lovely. I'm not keen on poems but different strokes for different folks!

Thank you everyone. It is a very fine line between keeping other people happy and us happy. We can't afford a honeymoon else, we thought maybe a mini-moon after the wedding so we can still have some luxury time away then maybe have a longer holiday the following year when we have some money again.

Would you use a website to send money to or have a postbox on the day? I know Paypal can hold honeymoon money but they charge a rather high percentage.....

We've asked for money, but we did it in that round-about "we don't expect a gift but if you wanted to give us something" way. We had already booked our honeymoon with Trailfinders and they set up a giftlist for us, however I think most people are actually just going to give money on the day, from what I've been told so far. No one has been bothered for it (or if they have, they haven't said anything to us!)

Depending on how busy you are etc, its actually not that hard to set up your own website that has a list of 'items' like 'cocktails by the beach - 20GBP'; 'horse ride through the forest - 50GBP' and so on as options for people to 'buy' and then they transfer that amount (you can either find out amounts if you know where you want to go on honeymoon, including perhaps 'shares' in the flights (ie offer 50 quid stakes in the flights, or get creative and do different bits of the flight, like the fuel, the seat, the meal haha) or just make these up) to your bank account - pop the details on the site and give each 'gift' a reference code so you can track them for thank yous - so they can do a direct transfer, or print out the gift they are giving and put the cash/cheque in with the print out in an envelope to give you at the wedding.

There are places that do this for you, but obviously charge commission, and paypal, as mentioned does too, which all seems a bit of a waste to me when you're still asking for the same thing, it's just people are loosing some of that hard earned money into the ether when doing it via certain channels. Obviously its a bit more Wedmin, depending on your IT skills, as you either have to remove things from the website as they are purchased or get someone to help set it up so its only one of each can be purchased etc, but to me that's worth it (although I will admit I used to be a web designer so am confident doing stuff like this, even though it was a while back and things have changed now - there are lots of off the peg free site builders though that walk you through doing stuff like this nowadays).

I think people almost expect to contribute to a honeymoon or house fund rather than items to put in a house nowadays, at the end of the day, spending however much on a dinner out for the couple, or a new blender doesn't seem much different....

We're in the same boat. We can't afford the honeymoon so we'd really appreciate money towards it. Just need a nice way to ask in our invites