The Guide is a small pocket size book that you can keep with your wedding planner and carry along with you for reference when you’re planning your wedding. Then when your mom or mother in law tell you what the proper etiquette is, you can give it a quick look up if you’re just not sure.

The book answers all your wedding etiquette questions from registering for gifts, to planning your reception, and everything in between.

The best part is The Pocket Idiot’s Guide to Wedding Etiquette doesn’t just cover traditional weddings, it also covers second weddings, cross-cultural weddings, and civil unions.

It would make a great gift for newly engaged couples. You can find out more about the guide at the Penguin Group website.

Image Penguin.com

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If you are unsure about this, there is no known practice to do this so really, it is up to you if you want to give your spouse-to-be a present on your wedding day. If you are saving and wishing to cut costs, this is an expense you can do without.

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I think the gifts should be returned. I personally spent close to $700.00 on a friend’s wedding gifts. When the wedding was called off, the couple sold many of the gifts. They split the remaining gifts and cash. Neither of them are in any financial hardship.

Here is a question from the other side, how do you approach a friend who has done this? I am very insulted. Can someone help?

If I was in her situation, I’d be insulted too considering the couple wasn’t in any financial hardship. The right thing would have been to write to all the guests and ask if they want their presents back. If I was this reader, I’d invite her for coffee and broach the subject gently. I’ll tell my friend (the bride or groom) that I am very sorry about their cancelled wedding but I would’ve appreciated to have been asked whether I want my gift back rather than being sold to benefit them.

Your friendship could survive this ‘confrontation’ (if you call it that) if it means to both of you. If it doesn’t survive then perhaps the friendship is not important in the first place.

The problem if you don’t say anything though is that ‘feeling insulted’ would turn to resentment and if not addressed could fester that you might stop being a friend to the bride or groom anyway.

What about you? What do you think our reader should do in this situation?

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“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?

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