AIBU to ignore the "honeymoon registry"

[NotAHappyBunnyHugger]

School friend is getting married this autumn. We are now in our mid-20s.
My partner and I are invited to the evening do, which starts at half 5. On the invitation and wedding website, there is no mention of an evening meal, just cake and welcome drinks, then a cash bar.

In the envelope with the invitation, they have included a card asking people to contribute money towards their honeymoon rather than giving physical gifts. I resent this a bit, when I'm paying for transport, accommodation, and a new outfit to fit the wedding's "theme", and not even getting an evening meal when I'm there. It feels a bit cheap.

I had already bought the couple a gift (a household item, but a really nice version that's handmade in the city I live in), but now I don't even want to give them that! The whole thing reminds me of kids at school who'd invite the whole class to their birthday party to get more presents.

I haven't been to any weddings before. Is this just normal? My partner and I are getting married in a couple of months and we've been careful to only invite the number of people we can afford to host properly (i.e. with plenty of food and booze). We wouldn't dream of asking our friends to pay for our holiday!

YABU - honeymoon registries are normal and acceptable. Get with it

YANBU - asking for gifts is tacky. People should pay for their own holidays

With all due respect it’s not really my problem. I’m sorry you’re having difficulty I didn’t, I don’t know what else to say.

A small place doesn’t need to be able to accommodate 120 inside if they allow a marquee in the grounds.

yeah you are overthinking it - either go and enjoy the party or don;t bother

they wont care or notice

we had a list that came to evening party only part and i honestly couldn't tell you who did or didn't come or if they left a present or money or what!

Sounds like you're doing them a favour, who'd want to be friends with someone that has that attitude.

Thank god, off you pop to write your Harrods shopping list :-)

I agree with you if you're there 5pm-11pm they should provide food, doesn't have to be a sit down meal, we laid on a buffet for our evening guests.
I had a wedding list, it's only a suggestion. A few people bought us gifts that were not on list and a few gave no gift. £100 gift seems too much for this particular wedding IMHO.

It comes across really caring and genuine how you're able to appreciate that different people have different financial circumstances and don't correlate what people can afford with how much they matter to you as a friend. @alwaysbuffingnails

I have loads of extended family, many of whom I'm actually closer to than more immediate family. But if I invited one cousin or second cousin to my wedding I'd have had to invite all 10 cousins and all 8 second cousins.. and obviously the family politics would ensue if I didn't. I invited them to the evening do because I really wanted them to be there on the day but I couldn't afford to bring them and etiquette meant I couldn't not invite aunts/ uncles to make space for them. Your attitude is a bit childish and comes across very demanding.

Erm yes but actual wedding venues (as opposed to fields and barns owned by farmers your parents happen to know) tend to have the same policy about the sale of drinks whether the guests are under a marquee or a thatched roof or a tiled one.

I have no idea why you seem to think that wedding venues won't try to fleece you on alcohol if a marquee is involved. Marquees aren't even a cheap option anyway.

@MissScarletInTheBallroom Our wedding venue was a pub/hotel. The drinks were very reasonable.

While I'd appreciate the generosity of the intent here, as a guest I'd much prefer being able to choose whatever I wanted to drink and pay for it if necessary, rather than being limited to whatever free drinks the couple felt it appropriate to provide.

Did you have a cash bar?

@MissScarletInTheBallroom Being dense, what's a cash bar? The guests paid for their own drinks if that's what it means?

@MissScarletInTheBallroom Ah yes, just Googled it! We paid for our own wedding so wouldn't have been able to afford to do anything else.
My incredibly generous FIL picked up some of the cost of drinks bless him (which I still feel incredibly guilty about to this day!)

Yes, exactly that.

The point I've been making is that it isn't just normal to have guests paying for some of their own drinks, it's actually quite difficult to avoid if you get married in the UK because venues now work on the basis that guests will be paying for their own drinks. So the only way to avoid that in most venues (if you want to pay for all the drinks) is to just run a bar tab and pay it off at the end, which makes it difficult to budget for your wedding.

@MissScarletInTheBallroom What's wrong with your guests paying for their own drinks?

It's a cultural thing. In the UK it's very normal. In a lot of other cultures it would be a huge no no. That's the issue I had because half my guests came from a culture where nobody would ever ask guests to pay for their own drinks at a wedding, so we knew a cash bar wasn't an option for us. But I had no idea how difficult it is to avoid doing that in the UK.

@MissScarletInTheBallroom Who picked up the bill then?

I think the upshot of the discussion is that culturally within the U.K. it’s still a huge no no for a lot of people. Hence the division of opinion.

@Mirabai I'm pleased our guests didn't mind paying their own way! Otherwise they'd have been on the water! 😆

I'm getting the exact opposite impression from the discussion.

Yeah I've never been to a wedding in the UK where the guests didn't pay for some of their own drinks. And I've never been to a wedding outside the UK where they did.

We didn't ask for any gifts or money, either.

We did. But we ended up not getting married in the UK.

Not really. The cash bar bit only came in in the last quarter of the thread. There's you insisting it's dreadful and gauche. There's 2 of us saying it really isn't and one other poster saying it's really not cool outside the UK so she tried to avoid it but still acknowledging it is totally fine in the UK

I got a wedding invite recently, I don't get many these days it's mainly funerals for me. It was only an invite to the evening party but it included one these don't buy us a gift cards please contribute to our honeymoon. I felt I was only being invited to give them money.
Needless to say I didn't go

If your relationship with them is such that you think an invitation is an attempted exploitation, it's good that you didn't go. Nobody wants a resentful, angry guest with such a low opinion of the couple.