To wish they’d stick to the bloody gift list (wedding)!?!?

[ArchieRevival]

DP and I get married next week.

We’ve been very considerate- put on all transport- invited kids- tailored food/drinks to personal preferences...etc.

Gifts are not expected, not at all and I was very clear about that. However we put together a small honeymoon gift list (ranging from £5-£100) and asked that anyone who did want to buy us something either select from the list- or make a charitable donation to our selected dementia charity.

DP and I live in a city centre terrace with limited space and are are TTC. We make a huge effort to avoid waste (random plastic tat) and generally dontate the majority of Christmas/birthday gunk to charity shops. The LAST thing I want to return from honeymoon to, is a load of generic gift crap.

Today I heard that my Uncle (the worst offender for gift gunk) has ignored our requests and instead had a A1 size murial artwork commissioned 😡😒 all I know is that it includes our wedding date and according to my mum is ‘...very bold’- which is her code for bloody awful!

I do not want this. I will not display this and I’m already struggling to fake gratuity for this unwanted item!

Why would anybody think that buying somebody else a large gaudy artwork rather than something they actually asked for is appropriate?

I’ve threatened not to send a Thank You card - obviously I will - but It’s really upset me that he couldn’t just respect our wishes!

Fully willing to be told AIBU.... but REALLY?

@needmorespace - honeymoon gifts are a list like this:

• flip flops size 7
• voucher to go whale watching during our trip
• suitcase
• spa treatment at the hotel

Etc - it’s things to use on or enjoy during the honeymoon itself.

You're terrible Muriel.

I would feel uncomfortable going to a wedding without a gift but am happy to give cash as so many people have set up home years before they get married. If I'm not sure it's a John Lewis voucher as they can always use it in Waitrose.

You sound mean of spirit. People put thought, money and time to buy you Christmas, birthday and wedding gifts and you boast and taking dumping it at charity shops.

For our wedding one friend made us a personalised painting with sewn elements. It was never to our taste and has been in a cupboard for over a decade. I can't bring myself to actually bin it though.

Tbh I think get people what they want! When my dd was born I asked for a voucher that could be used at multiple shops (including Asda etc) I to,d everyone I had enough clothes for her (absolutely did!) and to either give me a voucher or donate to a fab charity....ended up with sooo many clothes that I had to move to another country and the main reason I asked for the voucher was that I was broke and could have really used the extra food and used my cash towards the move.

The other thing I’ve found very frustrating is how many people are now saying ‘well we didn’t realise their was a gift list’ 😡 it’s on the website (included in all the invitations)!!! And it’s also the first thing that comes up on google if you run our names and wedding date in!

YABVVVVU to expect anyone else to look at your wedding website or google your wedding. No one else is interested, I promise. So it sounds like you didn't actually tell people in the invitations that there is a wedding list. In which case, they won't know. So expect a lot of surprise gifts, hooray!

@bridge

🤔 The intivation LITERALLY read ‘gifts are not nessisary, but a registry and charitable fund are available at ‘website link’.

We included it on the invite because we got so many questions after initially sending the save the date!

gifts are not nessisary, but a registry and charitable fund are available at ‘website link

What bollocks. No one believes your “gifts are not necessary” because you’ve immediately followed it up with a way to find a list of gifts you want.

You want gifts. You just want to decide what gifts you get, which is exactly the opposite of what “gift” is supposed to mean.

So tough shit if you get something you don’t love...that’s life.

If you’d really meant you didn’t want gifts that’s very, very easy to ensure with the right wording. But you didn’t mean it, did you?

Greedy & grabby...that’s you.

You don’t know you don’t like it. You haven’t even seen it yet. Why not wait until you’ve got something to complain about first?

We reluctantly put together a wedding list. We received a hideous set of chunky, handmade pottery which wasn’t on the list and cost a fortune. We said thank you, wrote a gracious thank you note and sent it to Oxfam.

For the record, I refuse to contribute to a honeymoon. It pisses me off.

Love the term 'giftgunk' and I shall be adopting it henceforth.

@allabout 🤔 that’s bollocks. We actually weren’t fussed AT ALL about gifts as we as both high earners and in no way reliant on any form of ‘contribution’ from anyone. On the save the date we said ‘no gifts’ but then got an avalanche of ‘but we MUST get you something’ so then we felt bad and offered a gift list/charity donation on our actual invites when we sent them out.

When people go onto the registry it clearly spells out that we DO NOT expect a gift!

How THE HELL are we supposed to stop people buying us tacky pointless plastic crap?!?!

If we ask for nothing .... but people insist....so we provide options...and people ignore them!

I spoke to DP tonight and have basically agreed that as we are transporting everything home from the venue the next day (alone in our small eco car) that we simply won’t bring any plastic tack home!

Since when has a commissioned artwork been “ tacky, pointless, plastic crap”? Ffs, get a grip.

FWIW we also requested no gifts at Christmas...but this was ignored by the same family members.

We feel very strongly about the ‘giftgunk’ culture and avoid it wherever possible.

After sending out the std’s even our parents stepped in to say we were BU to not provide gift options.

So how are we supposed to avoid it? If we’re ‘rude’ for asking for no presents and ‘ungrateful’ for not wanting random plastic/tacky gunk??

@also

🤔...there’s a whole lot of people on this thread who agree that a LARGE personalised and bold art work is a completely ridiculous/unwanted and presumptuous wedding gift.

So I think the vast majority agree

Doing what you can to reduce "plastic tack"
is one thing, but I fail to see what is environmental about refusing to take home gifts that have already been given to you.

Terribly well done on being a high earner though.

@pc - It’s not something I’d chose to mention unless being accused of being a money grabbing CF 🙄🤔 no- we actually weren’t fussed about the presents- not just saying it!

I think I’m just fed up of enabling the cycle. Every time they ignore our requests, and we act super polite and gracious that they’ve done that ....it just reinforces their not listening to us! I think unless we take a stand they will just keep doing it!

Well off people can be grasping too, they aren't mutually exclusive.

I'm not sure why you anticipate receiving so many future presents from your uncle?
Surely most adults don't get birthday/Christmas presents from extended family.

Yikes, I feel for you! But a people can be very strange about wedding presents, but a gift is a gift unfortunately. It doesn't seem to matter that you have a carefully chosen gift list, people will still buy tat - even expensive tat!

This sounds like a gift that will get damaged in an unexpected leak. Quite soon!

The morning after my wedding at breakfast in the hotel my sisters proudly presented me with a big canvas. I unwrapped it and it was a picture of a cartoon owl on the back was a heartfelt message about married life with the date of our wedding etc. I said something like "ohhhh thanks. I don't know what to say etc." Eventually I cottoned on it was a joke. I am extremely fussy so no family ever pick presents for me themselves. My sister dropped it off at a charity shop and every now and again we think what the people who bought it must think of us.

I was also given a massive heavy wooden chopping board with clipart wedding bells and our wedding date laser engraved on. That sat in a cupboard for three years before also going to a charity shop! I just don't have room for a massive chopping board in my life. I still feel bad about that one!

Oh yes I feel your pain. We had been living together for 10 years before we got married so didn't really need anything. We made it clear that no presents were expected but if people wanted to give a gift, a donation to a charity that was close to our hearts would be lovely. A few people 'complained' as they wanted to give us a tangible gift, so we made a simple gift list with M&S featuring a few bits and pieces that we'd like if people were so inclined (new wine glasses, towels etc). Nothing too expensive as we just didn't want / need it.
On the day we ended up with loads of tat keepsake gifts that were just not to our taste: carriage clocks (x3), a silver marriage certificate scroll thingy, napkin rings etc.

I'm sorry, but I am sniggering at all the holier-than-thou 'you sound ungrateful' and 'be grateful for what you are given' replies.

The OP has done everything reasonably possible to be tactful and thoughtful to her guests. She's said there's no need to give gifts; she's given multiple easy options for people who do want to give gifts.

A person who then decides to give her some random shite does not deserve gratitude. Whatever happened to giving a gift in the hope of making someone happy? You know, like normal people?

I completely don’t understand why some people don’t like/stick to wedding lists. I think it is a lovely idea to give people the option of donating to charity and to have a good price range for honeymoon contributions. I’d much prefer to get people something they wanted than waste my money on something they didn’t like.

I did laugh at the suggestion of sharing the Mural Misery by cutting it up like bits of wedding cake.

I honestly don’t see what else we could do!

I just spoke to my mother and she confirmed that several other family members have bought us random gifts as they ‘werent aware there was a gift list and wanted to buy us something’ when mum pointed out that the gift list/charity link are on the website AS NOTED IN THE INVITATION they just sort of shrugged their shoulders 🤔

So apparently these people consider themselves important enough to me, that I should pay £200 a head to host them for the day (😒🙄 it was NOT and option to not invite them without causing WW3) .... but DP and I are not important enough to them, for them to visit the website?!?!

Why would you accept an invite to a wedding you weren’t prepared to read the invite to/visit the website of???

And why are extended family/friends perfectly capable of reading the invite/making charity donations...but aunts/uncles/cousins... incapable?!?!?