Requests for gifts with the fucking wedding invite.

[intothenever]

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.

Are you planning not to take a gift op?

If not then I can see how a list would annoy you.

If you are then with a list you can be sure you have got the happy couple something they want.

If you don't want them to have something they definitely want then buy them something else.

I wouldn't bother getting upset about. IMO it's a rather neat, efficient way of buying someone a lovely gift.

If you are requesting one later it would be nice to send a sae and not expect them to pay postage a second time.

I love wedding lists. Such fun to see what people want. Last year some friends of ours were getting married and their list was adorable because they actually were setting up home for the first time. They needed tea towels and can openers

It's not presumptuous. One always takes a gift to a party or a wedding. It's convention. Therefore not presumptuous.

We got married half a year ago and I felt incredibly awkward sending out a gift list, we put in a little poem saying that nothing but company was necessary but if they wanted to get us anything just to be money to go into our savings. It's a difficult one to navigate I'm sure the bride and groom feel just as awkward asking, but if it's not in there you either get hounded for it or get things you don't want or need or in our case have space for ! I'm sure they meant no offence and if they invited you want your company more than your gift :-) Good luck !

I prefer to get a gift list with an invite although I don't like bring asked for money.

My friend got married a couple of years ago and asked for contributions towards her honeymoon. She had such s tantrum at the reception when she sat and started opening cards and found that some of them didnt have any money in them. She counted it all up and everything. It was embarrassing to watch!

Well, my family and friends actually wanted to buy me things and the things they got me are now treasured items. I love my 'wedding' candle holders from a mate, cheap, cheerful, (as was most of my list) but it gives ordinary things that elevated status of being my 'wedding' item.

Great, another way I've inadvertently offended people by doing something I thought was perfectly acceptable (helpful even!). Ta Mumsnet

This his the problem. Traditionally a wedding was the start of life together for a couple and their community of family and friends would help them get started by buying the essentials via the wedding gift list. Other cultures had slightly different versions eg Greeks pin money in the brides dress

Nowadays, most of us realise that we probably don't need lots and pans but the tradition of giving gifts remain.

I'm not wild about the being asked for money thing but I don't get offended. I've realised that people are just trying to navigate a changing world.

For myself, I love a gift list and Los lived having one. If been leaving independently and the. With dh for 15 years when I got married but had never had the money for "naice" things. So every day I enjoy using my lovely matching fluffy towels, or my properly weighted knives or my lovely slow cooker and casserole dishes.

YANBU OP - wedding lists used to be for couples who were setting up home for the first time so genuinely needed bed linen, crockery etc etc

But these days a lot of couples have been living together for a while before they get married so already have the household items they need so to then ask for stuff like that for gifts just seems greedy and grabby to me.

Plus their guests are possibly spending a lot of money on new outfits, accommodation and travelling to the wedding so it just seems extremely distasteful to then expect them to spend yet more money.

Oh and poems, requests for cash and those god-awful wishing wells at the reception - tacky tacky horrible shit

And I know plenty of people in RL who think the same so not an MN peculiarity as far as I can see...

It has always been perfectly acceptable to send the gift list with the invitation. It isn't rude or begging, it's the conventional way of doing things.

We didn't put a gift list in with ours. As soon as the invitations arrived, people started phoning us and asking for the gift list.

We told people we hadn't done one, had everything we needed, just wanted them there...no, we really wouldn't prefer cash, we genuinely just wanted them to come....etc etc

A week later we had to admit defeat and put together a gift list as everyone was getting so stressed about it!

They are traditional. My parents had one in 1966 so for that alone yabu it ain't new phenomenon is it....

I love gift lists. Find it exciting to look through them and decide what to buy

I also have no problem with requests for vouchers/money. They are my friends and I want to buy them something useful and will make them happy

We were not going to do a gift list as we had already combined two households when we moved in together. I mentioned this to a couple of people when we were wedding planning and they looked horrified. They said they much preferred having a list than trying to come up with a gift. So we put one together in the end. And sent it with the invite.

Everyone I know IRL does this. I think I have had it with every single wedding invite I have received. It makes life easier for guests who want to buy a present anyway (the majority) and those who wish to turn up empty handed are welcome to (as I made clear in the note sent with the invitation).

Just because there is a list, it doesn't mean you have to buy from the list. You can get what you want.
Lists are perfectly normal and not rude at all IMO, YABU.

I had a little ditty in with my invites about money towards experiences on our honeymoon etc...... I can only guess that the people complaining on here about it don't get invited to many wedding as if they did they would know that it is the norm these days to ask for money. Quite a few people gave us about £50!!! And I would rather use that money to pay for a elephant treckking trip to remember than on some tat that isn't to my taste and sit in a cupboard not used.

I know that there was probably some people that read my invites and screwed their face up at it but I know who they probably were and to be honest they were the people that I invited out of duty (I.e. Aunts and uncles that you never speak to and don't even like that much) and genuine friends and family wouldn't bat an eyelid to whatever the B&G wanted and would just be happy for them.

So if you are one if those people with that attitude towards the B&G then please think that you are probably on the guest list out of duty and they are more than likely having to pay about £80 each for you to be there when they would be quite happy if you didn't go and save them £160! Sorry but it really annoys me about the bitterness on here.

Genuine question - if you are already living together, have everything you need etc. why do you want a big wedding costing approx £80 per guest (particularly if some are only on the list out of duty ) and then assume people will want to contribute to your expensive honeymoon?

If you want a big party with all your friends then that is fine, but surely it shouldn't be equated with 'selling tickets' so that you can then pay for flashy honeymoon. . Why not have a much smaller wedding and pay for your own holiday?

The original idea of wedding guests was to buy things for a couples' new home.

Assuming it was actually a card with a number linking to a shop list, then YANBU - a discreet little card saying "if you would like to buy us a gift, there is a list of things we would like at X shop" is better than an actual 2 page list printed out.

I do't understand the angst about lists on MN, it's not like they are a new concept, the only new bit is them being at a particular shop and sending out with the invites, parents and grandparents here had lists, but in those days, it was an acutal printed out list that was circulated amongst the family, fine if you all live close together and the Mother of the Bride is organised enough to control the list to avoid multiple gifts, but few people in modern life live in the same town as all their family and friends, and then marry someone who also lives in the same town and all their family live close by.

I can only assume the people who are anti-lists either didn't realise that when they were DCs, lists were being circulated amongst the adults in the family and/or they came frm the sort of family that didn't do lists so you just got a pile of random stuff when you got married. I can see why a list being circulated that isn't directly asked for might seem more polite, but it does cause problems if friends and family on both sides aren't in contact, and few people live like that anymore.

Plus if Debretts says it ok, I can't see how it's seen as rude...

I'm just.... speechless.... at Twiddlebum's post.

Ragwort - surely the bulk of family on wedding guest lists are there out of Duty? Most of the weddings I've been to of friends did have cousins there who they say they only see at weddings, funerals and christenings, they aren't people you are close to, but for most families, weddings are social events to get everyone together - it's considered bad form not to invite them because weddings are one of the few occassions when extended family get to see each other.

Ragwort....

We got married and had a wedding (even after we have lived together for years) because we love each other and wanted a party to share the celebration with friends and family. Yes we could have had a cheap(er) wedding but we had friends and family travelling to us from all over the country so I wanted to serve them a lovely meal etc. people know we have good jobs so I'm sure they would have been more pissed off if they had come all that way to be given a dried up egg sandwich instead of a lovely meal when they know we can afford it. My DB/DSIL spend £2k on their wedding (didn't have a gift list) and the soo many people were moaning about it because of how wealthy they are and they felt like they weren't valued because of what the food was like etc!! Seems you can't win!

This wouldn't bother me. I wouldn't dream of turning up to a wedding without a gift and I'd far rather buy something they wanted and would enjoy, so it's useful to know and they probably don't want to have to reply to 100 people asking what they want when they are trying to organise a wedding if they didn't include this info.

You're right.

It's really rude and tacky.

How anyone can do something so crass and grasping is beyond me.

Just because someone might want to bring a gift doesn't make it anything other than greedy and obnoxious to send them a list of things you want.