to not get his cousin ANOTHER engagement present.

[textpest]

DP cousin got engaged two years ago. He has massive family and a large party was thrown - we gave her a gift and a voucher. Four weeks later the wedding was off and her mum said all presents etc would be returned. We had nothing back and neither has anyone else, some noises were made about "not knowing what people had got us" but she didn't even ask us. She is now engaged to someone else and having another party. DP mum has asked if we are getting a present and I got a you tight cow funny look when I said we had already spent £60 on her last time, got no thanks and the gift was in use at new partners house.

Am I being unreasonable to not want to waste the time/money? Her new fiance is well offish and they have a lovely fully equiped home.

This is why I dont understand big lavish celebrations for engagements.

pagwatch.

Yes, I was fucking seething. I remember saying to the woman in the shop 'this is NOT for me'

And yes had to unwrap the little fish and assemble the daft, godforsaken fish tank prior to wrapping it up.

The thing is, who has photos of a cousin and their boyfriend, much less enough to compose a thoughtful collage? Much as it would make me snigger to be able to digitally segue shots of them skipping through a meadow to eating candy floss together and perhaps flick paint at each other while decorating their new home...

I forgot I bought this for our neice "Worst-case Scenario Survival Handbook: Weddings (Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbooks)". I think she appreciated it!

Just get them a card and a couple of packets of love hearts

Sounds like she could really do with a book on etiquette. Perhaps with a rather nice bookmark handily placed in the pages on not being too grasping about presents, or returning presents if you don't actually get married...

I had an engagement party and definitely didn't expect gifts. But then we also held mardi gras, christmas, easter, doctor who, scrabble founders birthday, eid, diwali, not a christening, housewarming, housecooling, carnival, tapas, hotpot, summer, winter, fire, birthday, hats, saturday, ann summers, virgin vie, and pretty much any other type of party too

When we got engaged we had an informal 'gathering' with friends in the pub! No presents or even naming it as an engagement party, it was an excuse to celebrate and have a few drinks/gossip with friends. We obviously missed a trick!

But again, we got engaged and started planning the wedding straight away (I think we had more or less decided what we wanted and roughly when by the time we finished the meal at which he proposed!) and the wedding took place 6 months later.

Engagement present? don't think I've ever even thought of buying one of those. Just wait for the unlikely wedding and give the gift then