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.

It's all quite simple.

Having a wedding list = fine
Not having a wedding list = fine
Putting the list in with the invitation = rude
Giving the list to people on request = fine
Asking for cash (in with the invitation or not) = rude
Not taking a gift of any kind = rude
Giving a gift from the list = fine
Giving a gift not on the list = fine

I disagree.
I think it's fine to put a list in with the invitation and ask for cash.
I think it's rude to go off list when buying a gift.

I am delighted to get things off a gift list.I am also happy to give money as a gift. It avoids ending up with four mismatched cutlery sets like we did. That kind of waste pisses me off far more.

Panzee I had no problem with people going off-list at my wedding (but then I put the gift list cards in with the invitations, so what do I know?). The gift list, imo, was just a suggestion for people who wanted to buy us a gift and wanted an idea of what would be useful. If anyone wanted to choose something themselves that they thought we'd like, that was fine too.

I do find wedding lists a bit odd, but then I find the whole complicated formal process around weddings to be quite strange, and a bit of a mystery to me. We just asked people in person, or by email or phone (depending on how we normally communicate with them) if they'd like to come along for the ceremony and have lunch/drinks with us afterwards, and that was about it. It didn't occur to me to send out paper invitations or lists.

If anyone asked what we wanted for a gift, we said 'no thanks, really we don't need/want anything, please don't go to the trouble.' Some people brought gifts anyway, which was fine, but not expected or required.

Personally, I don't give a fuck :)

If someone wants money, great. Saves me having to guess what they'd like.

And I would never dream of turning up at a wedding without a present unless they have specified a charity to give to instead.

That would be rude.

YABU I'm afraid. It's traditional and totally acceptable IMHO. I recently went to a wedding and the gift list went straight to a travel site where we could buy vouchers as the happy couple were going to travel to Peru next year. As they'd been living together for several years they already had all the household stuff they need and I felt that travel vouchers were a good idea. The wording on the card was very tastefully done so it didn't sound grabby. I was glad to give my friend something she really wanted.

If someone wants money, great. Saves me having to guess what they'd like.

I was glad to give my friend something she really wanted.

I am delighted to get things off a gift list.

I agree with all of these things. Just don't enumerate your requests in the invitation.

IN BOLD. WHAT I SAY GOES.

Traditional and the norm socially.
Very odd to do anything else.

YABU IMO.

If you would bring a gift to a wedding, I can't see how you could take offence at being told what might be useful/needed/treasured.

I find the attitude of people who refuse to buy from a list a bit selfish, 'I want' to choose something, 'I want' them to have something to remember me by, me me me.

Most gift lists I have seen started with gifts around the £3 mark, for a bowl or serving spoon or the like therefore people can get something useful for a lot less than they would otherwise have spent on something not wanted or needed, but that the gifter wanted them to have.

I can understand it seeming grabby, but then inviting people in the first place could seem self centred and thoughtless if you wanted to turn it round that way, I mean expecting people to pay to travel or possibly stay, buy drinks for a whole night and mingle with strangers just so you can prance around being the centre of attention.

Depends how you want to look at it. I have always viewed it as, 'how lovely to be invited to x's wedding, I will be bringing a gift anyway so I'll check the list and see what they might like'

IN BOLD. WHAT I SAY GOES.

That's right.

Only in MN land is this considered rude. Lists are normal, I didn't want one but was nagged into one because they're normal. And it's not like you include the print out in the invitation just the link. Going off list is fine, giving cash is fine, giving nothing cause you can't afford it is find.

The professionally offended need to get a hobby!

I look at some of the tacky crap sold at places like notonthehighstreet and realise that's why people have gift lists. Why do you want to run the risk of getting something they don't want or like? As for including it in with the invitation, isn't that more convenient all round? I'd be mightily pissed off if I had to go round the houses trying to find out what someone wants all in the name of outdated etiquette.

Yes, it's traditional to have a list. No, it's not traditional to include it with the invitation.

"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..."

Agree entirely with this. Just because something is traditional doesn't make it right, and I wish more people would challenge convention.

I think it's ruder to necessitate your guests phoning up unknown in-laws etc to get the gift list than just including it in the invitation to start with. That would make me roll my eyes and grumble!

I went to two weddings this summer. One requested no gifts but that guests contribute to the reception e.g by making a CD, a dish for the buffet, manning the bar for an hour, bringing decorations etc. That was lovely (I brought a gift as well) and I really liked feeling that I had done something nice for them. The other requested cash, I put £20 in a card and liked feeling I had bought them a cocktail on honeymoon. I love my friends, I was happy and grateful to celebrate their weddings and I wanted to give them whatever gift they would most appreciate. The idea that I would be so crass and unpleasant as to cringe at their requests or judge them for behaving in a completely normal, acceptable and convenient way is vile and I am very glad not to be that sort of person!

Not taking a gift of any kind = rude

All of the weddings I've been to have requested no gifts.

One requested that we bought a dish for the buffet and our own meat to cook on the bbq and I was happy to oblige

Convention is overrated

Another one here who has never heard anyone in real life gripe about wedding gift requests, it really is just a weird mumsnet thing!

The only thing I don't like are the money request poems, bleugh! (But only because the only people I know who have done them are dicks).

And the reason that some people ask for money now rather than wedding list is precisely because they have everything they need to set up home, but could still use some cash for conservatory/honeymoon/kitchen etc. what is the problem with that? It's not like they are getting married just for the cash in most cases

Another one here who HATES the assumption that gifts MUST be given at weddings.

At our own wedding, we stated "no gifts please" on the invitations. (It's expensive enough just to go to a wedding with transport, hotel, time off, babysitters etc.)

Most people getting married these days have the basics. In the past couples did NOT live together so needed everything. (And freq were happy with 2nd hand stuff.)

Now people are so greedy/grabby/spoiled. They want matching posh stuff. (Not just the essentials.)

If you threw a party and invited people, surely you wouldnt give them a gift list?

I totally HATE gift lists and I am not fussed about going to weddings either. So I dislike receiving wedding invitations, as I usually decline. (Unless from close family.)

If I DO decide to go to the wedding, it's purely to honour/please the couple. So that's my 'gift' to them as usually there's some expense involved in attending. And I feel that there's no need for a gift unless they are frightfully poor or unless I know EXACTLY what would please them and am willing to buy it.

Expecting a gift, (as in "it's rude to turn up without a gift") I think is VERY RUDE. And, (as in all the Xmas gift madness), makes for an overly comsumeristic society.

There are far too many occasions now where gifts are EXPECTED eg engagement party, birthday party, house warming party, Christening party, wedding party etc.

Give gifts if you like but it has all got too obligatory for my taste.

Why can't gift giving be more optional? And not always reciprocal at Xmas?

It's even more rude to start a thread then not come bacj