Wedding gift - how much money would you give?

[chiccachicca]

Not really an AIBU, but I wasn’t sure where else to post. It’s more of a WWYD.

We are going to wedding in the next few months, all day and a dinner the night prior, DH has known the Groom since school but they aren’t massively close. We’ve not seen them him in a few years and never met his partner.

The Bride and Groom have asked for money towards a honeymoon. We haven’t been to a wedding for years and I’m not sure what is an average amount of money to gift.

How much would you gift?

It all depends on your circumstances and how much you can / want to afford. It matters not one jot what anyone else thinks or says about your gift. I would say £50 is perfectly acceptable, go less if that's too much for you. The type of venue, meal, bells and whistles trimmings is all irrelevant...and dont feel obliged to go if you don't know them that well either.

You give what you can afford. For a friends wedding recently we gave £50 and I saw that as a lot of money. But it was local to us and we had no expense apart from drinks at the wedding. Another couple who we are very close with had a destination wedding and it wasn’t cheap for the flights and accommodation to get there, so as far as I was concerned we couldn’t afford any more. We got them a token gift of a horseshoe and then picked up a traditional good luck charm from the country they got married in while we were there. They loved it and still mention it now. All these people saying hundreds, that’s great if you can afford it but in no way should you be worrying over amounts if you can’t. When I got married I didn’t expect anything and we did get £10 and £20 in a card from some guests, whereas others did give more, and I appreciated every bit of it.

Most people would (or at least should!) be grateful for anything so just give whatever you can afford or want to as it all adds up. When we got married we didn't have a gift list but also didn't specify that we wanted money, but most people did end up giving money in a card. It varied from £20 to £100, nobody was giving us £200 or more!

It’s the complete opposite where I’m from. It’s not usually hard to find out what the bride and groom has spent on the guests per head, so you return that plus a little more. So for the last wedding in my family it was £60 per head for the wedding dinner, so the majority of us gave them £70 in a card.

That just seems so transactional. The bride and groom might as well charge guests a set amount each.

So if you had two friends of equal friendship etc I've who got married in a pub and one who got married in a posh hotel would you give them different amounts of money?

Indeed. I hate this idea. It makes a mockery of the whole idea of hosting and being a guest. And it's really intrusive to go round trying to work out what the couple's budget was.

It depends on what your 'spare money' situation is.

This gets asked a lot (although, oddly I've not seen it on MN for a few weeks, it also gets asked on wedding forums), and partly it is regional (I have learned that in some parts of Ireland there is a tradition of giving a lot more than in most of the rest of the UK, for example.
Couples who have recently got married often come on and say it varied hugely, from a tenner to £100.
But it depends how much money you have available to yourselves, and also how close you are to the couple.
Now we are older / top of our careers / no childcare or mortgage to pay / not going to lot of weddings every year, then we can afford to be more generous than our adult dc, who are of an age when there are lots of weddings, and also they are balancing their budget each month in terms of mortgages, utility bills, car insurance, and all the other bills they need to balance, so, at the same wedding we would give more than they would.

We normally give £100 if an all day shot, £50 if evening guest. Close family would be more. But i actually hate when people ask for only money..

How much would you gift?

Irrelevant what others would gift. What are you happy to gift? How much can you afford to gift? Answer those and you’ll have your answer

Thank you all, a mixed response.

We are not in Ireland and neither is the wedding. £300+ seems crazy!

Two of us are going, no DC. I think all things considered we’ll go for £100.

Thank you for the advice!

I was just going to say 100 £ in a nice envelope would be perfect imo. That's what we usually give to close friends regardless if it's in a castle or in a pub.

Working on this "buying a seat" basis, then there must be a correlation between giving people a larger gift, and them already being better off than the other couple.
You seem to be saying, if a couple are already wealthy enough to be splashing £150per head on their guests, then you want to give them more money than a couple who are less well off and decide to do a different style of wedding, costing less ?
What the couple spend on their wedding, is their choice. The amount a guest gives, is their choice.

£50.

That's just ridiculous. And as a bride I'd be gutted to think people had to cover their bill. My wedding would be my choice, at my expense.

The type of venue, meal, bells and whistles trimmings is all irrelevant
I would see that as very relevant.
I give £100pp all day, I wouldn't accept an evening only invite, but if I did I would imagine £35ish pp. As you are attending a meal the night before, you should probably add on another £30 each. You are getting a brilliant, all expenses paid day out. What would that normally cost you? And if, in typical MN style, you don't see it as a joyful, happy event, refuse the invitation.

I love weddings. Never understand the MN hate for them. But I don't go round trying to tot up how much has been spent on me as a basis for how much I would give. It would be based entirely on my closeness to the couple. I wouldn't subtract from my gift for being only an evening guest and I wouldn't ad on or remove any based on my assessment of the expensiveness of the venue.

That's what makes the type of venue etc irrelevant. The miserable ones are the ones taking all that into account and making it a sad little transactional calculation.

It’s courtesy to cover your plate

It really isn't. Not in many circles. It's really rude and ungrateful as a guest.

I'd have been offended and annoyed if I thought anyone was calculating how much I'd spent on them and trying to pay me back. It's so crass.

We usually do £100 if we're going all day and £50 if we're going to the reception

I do hate this idea of "paying for your plate"!

Give what you can afford/would like to give.

£100 if not going to a wedding but know the couple, £200 if going to the wedding.

£30. You hardly know them and they'll make a fortune asking for cash anyway.

£50. People gave between £20 and £100 when I got married with the most common amount £50. We didn't ask for money so we got lots of lovely physical gifts too.
My circle is fairly middle class and London based.

£100 i would say as you are there all day and two of you.