Asking for wedding cash gifts
August 27, 2007 by Christine Gooding
Filed under Wedding Etiquette, Wedding Gifts: Tips and Ideas
If there’s anything that you should not do, it is putting a disclaimer or a note at the bottom of your wedding invitation like this:
“The favor of your gift is declined, only monetary gifts accepted.”
Etiquette Hell reacted this way:
Those words are like waving a red flag in front of a bull. We are compelled to act upon those words in ways the bride and groom never envisioned or intended. You want money as a gift? We’ll give you money…our way. Yes, we might give money….in a foreign denomination forcing the recipient to expend time and energy going to a bank to get it converted. Or wrapping up the lowest value of coinage into rolls which once again forces the recipient to haul it to a bank to be converted. If a group of wedding guests were to do this, it might take the use of a dolly to haul it all in to the wedding. One hundred eighty-one pennies ($1.81) weighs a pound (16 ounces) so a generous gift of $100 would weigh about 54 pounds, give or take a few ounces.
Yes, we have talked about the crassness or practicality of asking for wedding cash gifts but please I deplore you, do not do it this way. Subtlety and discretion are the way to go, ok?
I think I would decline such an invitation — though I wouldn’t tell the happy couple why. Not everyone who attended my wedding brought a gift or card, and that was fine by me and The Beard. The one gift we wanted more than anything was the presence of friends and family. Anything else was icing on the wedding cake!
I agree with you, Never Teh Bride!
I agree too.
I think its crass asking for money – no matter how politely you ask for it.
Crass crass crass.
in the american culture perhaps, but in asian cultures it is completely the norm!