I am stunned at this wedding list

[Bananaknickers]

Family member is getting married for the second time. She pinched her husband to be from his first wife( she was married too).He has his own business and she works full time. Now they have sent us a list from John Lewis if we want to buy something from there although they say we have lots already. Here's the good bit, they would like cash donations as they are building an extention on the side of their house

I don't have a problem with getting gifts for weddings/anniversary's/Birthday's - whatever the occassion may be - what I have a problem with is how it is requested...

EG - SIL and BIL married last year ( both 2nd marriages - she had just bought herself a brand new Porsche - CASH - 3 houses between them and a holiday home in France - so not exactly knocking on the poor house door!!)

Anyway - "keep the date free" card arrives ( and what the Feck is all that about ???) advising us of impending nuptuals and that the invitation proper will arrive in due course - wherein will be contained a red envelope for you to donate to "X and Y's "life fund" we do not require gifts but please feel free to place what you deem appropriate in the envelope"

Arrived at the wedding and placed around were cut glass bowls in which the red envelopes were to be placed - double

We gave what we deemed "appropriate" for their life fund - Photocopies of all notes of the realm and a bill for our matchmaker fees as we had introduced them !!!

Shame really as they truly are utterly lovely - but turned in to pretentious wedding twunts for a few mercifully short months in the lead up to the event !!!

When we got married we specifically asked for everybody NOT to buy us gift - dh had been married before and we had all we needed - just that the guests came along and enjoyed the day with us. It actually went down quite badly with some family members if you can believe it - as if we we're bragging that we had loads of stuff and didn't need their paltry gifts!! In the end after much nagging, we asked for towels (you can never have enough!!)we ended up with around 120! I use them instead of toilet paper...joke!

Message withdrawn

I'd buy them a contribution to Oxfam.

I really and truly would.

I agree it's vulgar.
Asking for cash feels all wrong to me.
You're then paying to go to a wedding which you may not even want to go to.

what about store gift cards?

I think John Lewis vouchers are fine personally (Having received some myself!)....
But I guess one person's vulgar behaviour is another's height of elegance! We did get a Harrod's token as a present - Very flash!
Worst present was a framed vintage concert poster for a band I don't like sigh.
what about people who give no present at all? I felt a bit hurt by not even a card from quite a few of our guests. not that they should feel obliged to give a gift and yet I did feel a bit hurt that some didn't.

Don't have a problem with asking for cash.

Don't have a problem with it being a second marriage.

At the end of the day most people want to give a present of some sort so if they would rather have money towards something they want then why shouldn't they? Five years down the line they might think, "Thanks to our friends and family we have a lovely extension, without them we might have struggled."

Wedding lists are about as controversial as breast v bottle on Mumsnet, makes me laugh

I think asking for cash is really trashy. But then a family member of ours has not one, but two lists sent out with the invitations... The, please furnish our house with lovely goodies from a wedding list company list, and then the second list, please pay for all of our honeymoon "list with a twist".. where you hand over your cash to her sister and they spend it on "a bottle of champagne on arrival in Mauritius" or "dawn safari on the Okongo"..

I thought that was pretty tacky, but then they are struggling, or at least I'm assuming they are.. They both work full time, with him earning a six figure salary, and for some reason can't afford to pay for any of their enormous wedding, not even the postage on the 200 invitations...

Sorry to hijack this thread with my bitter and twisted views on the upcoming family wedding..

oh bugger there goes our ploans then
dh and i were thinking of getting married again (to each other) so we can have the hen/stag partys and the presents
didnt have a list for our wedding but we got lots of b&q vouchers that helped decorate our house