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AIBU?

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Original poster

Requests for gifts with the fucking wedding invite.

319 replies

intothenever · 16/12/2013 06:10

HOW is this socially acceptable? How? Family and friends, Please join us as we celebrate our love and commit to spend our lives together. Enclosed is a list of things we would like you to buy us. 1000 times worse when the demand for gifts is in rhyming couplets.

OP posts:
DirtyDancingCleanLiving · 18/12/2013 20:54

I cringe at gift lists or notes/poems (especially poems) that ask for money or vouchers. I just think asking in advance for a present (any present) is incredibly crass. I'm aware i'm probably in the minority here.

Df and I are getting married next year and don't intend on asking for anything. If people want to give a gift/money/vouchers then they will.

I don't personally want any gifts that are only given because they're asked for. I'd rather have none at all.

BillyBanter · 18/12/2013 21:00

"I don't like fake We just want you there but if you really want to give us something then money towards X would be lovely. If you want money, just ask."

I don't see anything fake in that.

Shockingundercrackers · 18/12/2013 21:07

We invited 100 guests to our wedding with no mention of presents. As far as I know this bothered precisely no one and we ended up with incredible thoughtful gifts that we would never dreamed up ourselves. Not a single toaster either.

Best of all, 4 years on, whenever I use a present i think of our day and our lovely friends - and it always makes me smile.

flowerygirl · 18/12/2013 21:25

I am astonished anyone would go to a wedding without a gift! Height of rudeness! I have a friend who hasn't given a gift at my or my friend's weddings...we've all discussed it amongst ourselves and just don't get what is going through her head that she thinks it's acceptable!

Makes me laugh some on this thread think it's grabby to put a list in. But it's ok to enjoy the 3 course meal, entertainment, transport, free bar without showing your gratitude!?

I'd rather a list/request for money clearly stated in the invite. Otherwise you've got to call the bride up and ask what they want...they then get this call 100+ times! Pain in the hole!

limitedperiodonly · 18/12/2013 22:11

many people (including myself) are questioning gift lists for people who have already set up home. They simply don't need anything for the house. They may want better shit for their house, but they don't need anything. It's not what wedding gifts are traditionally for is it. I'd be chuffed to help a couple who were genuinely setting up home together and had nothing, or were so poor they were very short of things, but to buy stuff for a couple who have all they need, well, that jars on me I'm afraid

Do all you wedding present refusniks really agree with this? Seems terribly mean-spirited to me.

When I married I moved from my parents' house into my married house, so that would be all right by you lot, so long as I didn't ask for anything too nice, wouldn't it?

However, I could have bought all my things, so maybe it wouldn't have been all right.

These days the odd madly generous person buys me birthday presents and I'm expecting some totally undeserved and wildly impractical Christmas presents soon. I reciprocate. Is that wrong?

Thank fuck we're not on each other's Xmas lists.

SomethingkindaOod · 18/12/2013 22:15

We asked for Argos vouchers in the wedding invite Grin
We were, according to some on this thread half right about it though, we were on the bones of our arses when we moved in together with a tiny baby and everything down to the carpet in our bedroom was second hand, even the kettle. So when we eventually decided to get married we asked for vouchers to start replacing things. DH was working as a printer at the time and actually printed the flaming gift request into the invite Blush, I'm rather glad MN wasn't around at the time for that one...

limitedperiodonly · 18/12/2013 22:17

I'm just trying to think of the Soviet-style utility wedding list to please people:

Saucepan (large, for the boiling of bones in X1)
Matches (safety, for lighting of single gas ring X1 - approx 50 per box, two thirds probably too damp to work)
Potatoes (mouldy. As many as you want.)

Enjoy comrades, for tomorrow we die gloriously.

BillyBanter · 18/12/2013 22:18

It's rude to supply a wedding list but also rude not to take a gift?

Being British is very complicated.

limitedperiodonly · 18/12/2013 22:20

Being British is very complicated

Really? I've always found it quite easy.

Maybe I'm French and all these years I haven't realised.

BillyBanter · 18/12/2013 22:21

Read this thread, limited. It's obviously not at all straight forward.

limitedperiodonly · 18/12/2013 22:23

Oh, I've read quite a bit billy but if you think I need edited highlights go ahead.

MrsGrasshead · 18/12/2013 22:25

I think every wedding I've been too there's been a gift list with the invitation. I have no problem at all with it. Otherwise I'd have to contact them and ask them what they want. It just saves them sending out letters twice and dealing with a load of phone calls.

BillyBanter · 18/12/2013 22:26

I doubt it would help.

SDTGisAnEvilWolefGenius · 18/12/2013 22:40

Intothenever - we had dinner plates that could be bought individually on our wedding list, because we wanted to have some things that only cost a fiver - and if someone had bought us one plate, I would have been just as grateful for that as for six of them or whatever. And if someone couldn't afford a gift at all, it made no difference to me at all - I wouldn't have dreamt of judging them. To be honest, it didn't occur to me to cross check the guest list and the list of people who'd sent gifts, so I couldn't tell you if people all bought gifts or not.

As someone up thread said, the whole thing is a minefield, and it seems as if whatever the bride and groom do, someone is going to be offended.

HesterShaw · 18/12/2013 22:47

No one has replied to the point I made about the couple who said oh we don't want anything, oh ok, just get whatever you like, I'm sure it will be lovely, who then singularly failed to acknowledge their present. This is compared to the couple who said in their invitation, thank you but we have everything we need for the house. If you'd really like to buy us a gift, what we'd like most of all is a honeymoon to Ireland - they then wrote us a lovely chatty letter thanking us very much for the cheque. Who has better manners? Who? I demand to know your opinion! :o

lessonsintightropes · 18/12/2013 22:53

Hester maybe people didn't reply because it's totally obvious that the couple who wrote to thank you are the nicer people and appropriately showing gratitude, and this doesn't fit with the weird anti-list camp.

I wrote to all our guests to thank them for their attending our wedding (and to thank them for gifts where appropriate) a week after returning from honeymoon. I did have a list although I didn't include it with the invite but did include a link to a website with more information about hotels, transport etc, which also had a link to a gift list for us (which also included gifts from £11 up).

However I'm clearly an ill-mannered, grasping cow in the eyes of a number of the people in this thread who I am extremely grateful not to be related to or friends with. Nasty, mean, snobbish and unkind (looking at you OP for starters).

HesterShaw · 18/12/2013 23:07

Thank you for indulging me lesson Flowers. I too had a contemptible wedding.

Surely it's completely obvious that it's not as black and white as "people who have gift lifts and requests for money are rude, cheap, grabby and common and people who don't acknowledge that wedding presents are expected are much more classy".

lessonsintightropes · 18/12/2013 23:25

To be honest I think the much greater sin is to turn up to a wedding without a gift. I wouldn't consider it. If like the OP I was travelling some distance then I'd bring more of a token from home rather than something from a list, but in any other circumstances would think it incredibly cheap not to buy a gift. And I've been to 8 this year not including my own from every possible part of the social spectrum (massive Jewish wedding in central London, Arab wedding in a country house hotel, various anglo ones and a Dutch wedding) - lists at each and every one. Not an inexpensive year - but important to me that my friends felt that their special day was marked!

SDTGisAnEvilWolefGenius · 18/12/2013 23:37

Hester - dh and i split up writing the thank-you letters so he was supposed to write to his friends and relatives, and I wrote to mine. We got married in the August, and when I was writing the christmas cards, I found out dh hadn't got round to writing his thank-yous! Is it possible that has happened in your case?

HesterShaw · 18/12/2013 23:41

No idea! They were joint friends. I'm not going to look round for excuses for them.

TheRealAmandaClarke · 19/12/2013 06:04

Some ppl don't write thank you cards.
It's a little bit rude IMHO.
I don't think gift lists are rude. Even with the invite.
You're right, it isn't black and white.
I don't think writing a thank you card absolves anyone of prior rudeness though. I attended a wedding where the bride sent beautiful and thoughtful thank you letters for gifts/ attendance. But I was still annoyed that the arrangements for the wedding itself had been so ridiculously difficult for me that I resented attending. The letter didn't make up for that tbh.

TobyLerone · 19/12/2013 06:19

but to buy stuff for a couple who have all they need, well, that jars on me I'm afraid

I have all I need, but my mum still buys me a Christmas present. My grandad definitely has all he needs (he's 85), but we still buy him things on Christmas and birthdays.

How bloody mean and ridiculous.

I love a wedding list. We've just had a wedding invitation with a poem asking for money which is so tacky (as is the whole invitation) I'd love to share it on here but I daren't.

TheRealAmandaClarke · 19/12/2013 06:25

We didn't have a gift list, for which I received complaints.
I felt uncomfortable asking for gifts and didn't want ppl to think they needed to buy presents but it us made it difficult for ppl.
It also meant I have some things now cluttering up my house that I really could do without, but don't have the heart to get rid of.
You just can't win.

I agree with tobylerone above.

nooka · 19/12/2013 06:33

Seems a bit unfair to say that those who find love later in life shouldn't get presents, especially if you yourself did. On the other hand the present isn't some sort of quid pro quo for the privilege of being invited to an expensive party!

You should invite people to your wedding because they are important to you and you want to celebrate together, and you should give a gift for pretty much the same reasons. I didn't give a wedding present to my brother because he needed anything but because I love him and wanted to mark his wedding with something he and his lovely wife will (I hope) use regularly and think of their special day. I wish they had had a list though as I might have got their gift quite wrong (my other sister swopped the present I gave them for something else as it wasn't quite their taste - the perils of buying off list!)

SDTGisAnEvilWolefGenius · 19/12/2013 09:40

Nooka and Toby - very wise words!