Do I mention no gift?

[Candleinalantern]

I’ve been with my DH for 5 years and recently got married (second marriage) just a casual wedding, registry office and then back to a local bar to celebrate, we kept numbers small and only invited people who we see or are close to. On my side i invited my immediate family and 2 aunties, an uncle and a cousin and some close friends.

the next day we opened all our cards and gifts and lots of people were very generous and we have sent thank you’s to all those that came and gave gifts/money.

my dilemma is that my uncle, auntie and cousin all just gave a card which I thought was unusual. I know I am most likely coming off here as entitled and I know I am probably judging by my own standards but I would never have attended a close family members wedding and not gave a gift, even a token bottle of prosecco. On the other hand I’m wondering if they have gave something and it’s been misplaced and that I haven’t said thanks for something they have gave as I haven’t received it?

would I be unreasonable to say something? Does anyone have any advice or should I just leave it?

Can you not just be grateful that they attended? You don’t know their financial situation. I can’t stand people who expect a gift. We had 120 to our wedding and I thanked everyone, gift or not.

Wedding gifts are for young people starting out on their big adventure usually in their first home etc.

I wouldn’t buy or expect to be bought a gift for a second wedding at all ever.

Some people still hold to the view - now old fashioned - that you don't give gifts for second weddings

I agree. That's always been my understanding.

My DSis’s first husband turned out to be abusive. Their wedding was very quiet.

She met her current DH a couple of years after getting divorced & he’s a lovely bloke who she’s really happy with. When they got married, 3 years in, it was a really special day full of family & friends & her smiles are my best memories of it.

It would have been really cruel & unfair to treat their wedding as ‘lesser’ just because it was her second.

Not sure I could think of 50 things I'd want or have space for. Do wedding registry's take into consideration everyone's budget? I guess that's irrelevant anyway. Big budgets could still reach for token items. Someone said asking for money was vulgar, I don't think so. Asking for certain items that cost set amounts seems worse. Traditional doesn't necessarily mean better. That's only in my eyes of course though.

Do you check the venue and menu first then?

Because back in the old days, they bought because the bride and groom were setting up home and had nothing

Today that isn't the case, especially second time round

Can someone explain why when someone decides to get married for the hundreth time they expect presents!!?? It seriously winds me up, then they split up get married again and want more presents

To be honest I don’t think you can expect gifts for s second, low key wedding. Especially if you got gifts the first time around.

The idea of a wedding registry is to avoid getting a bunch of things you don't want, and to get stuff that matches, like a dinner service. We were young-ish when we married and didn't have lots of stuff. Ours had items down to 5 pounds, and we used the heck out of our gifts. Still using them today.

It's definitely unusual OP, especially when you've catered for a family of 3. You aren't being entitled at all. It's bad manners on their part. Even like you said, a small gift, a bottle of wine or something would be polite and well meaning. Maybe it's because I'm from Northern Ireland but here we are generally generous when gifting for weddings, birthdays etc. YANBU

CrystalShoe · Yesterday 14:36

Winterscomingbrrr · 04/10/2025 13:52
Were you providing food/drinks? Covering the cost of your plate seems to be increasingly a thing in the UK.
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That's such a vulgar idea. When I got married, it would never in a million years have occurred to me to equate the cost of their attendance with their gift. We invited them because we wanted to, and expected nothing.
........

I agree, Crystal, would never even think of such a thing, it's unbelievably vulgar to even consider 'covering the cost of your plate'.

JFC of course say absolutely NOTHING.

And this attempt to justify your grabby behaviour "We provided a buffet and put £500 behind the bar" is totally, 100% irrelevant. As others have pointed out you are vulgar for even bringing this up.

I've never been to a wedding where I didn't bring a gift either - doesn't matter. At all.

You pay for the party, you choose who to invite. If you get a gift, great, say thanks. If you don't, be quiet. That's the only acceptable way to behave.

You don't, actually, think the gift may have been lost (not at all) but let's pretend you do think this - ask someone who might know and DO NOT mention it to them directly.

You are being massively unreasonable.

When i got married my husbands family brought us nothing, not even a card. Unbeknownst to me at the time he'd paid for several of them to stay at the hotel we got married at as they whined on at him about it. (No we couldn't afford it, we were paying for our wedding!) We provided food, drinks and reduced accommodation. People could have gone home if they wished instead of staying. It wasn't a destination wedding, it was about 40 mins from their various homes. It was 2018 and no one could manage a £1 card factory card but could manage pints at £8/£9 a pop all night and got absolutely steaming drunk. Would it have been "entitled" to expect something? No. As I said at the time, to keep all of the cards and gifts and even gift tags from people. It's so nice to look back at these things and keep them. We have nothing from any of his siblings and their partners except the memories of them being wasted and then throwing up the next morning and moaning all through breakfast.

This...

So does this mean in the US, that when I was a impoverished student that I then couldn't go to a wedding unless I could pay the full cost of covering my invite??

Especially when it may have cost a whack to travel to a place?(thinkjng that recently friends have had a huge travel bill - travelling from Cornwall/Devon to North of Scotland with overnight stop to a dear friends wedding??)

A friend was a professional baker and made beautiful wedding cakes... When her close pal got hitched, she made the most beautiful, dramatic cake, a real work of art, for about 150 guests....

Huge amount of skill, time and ingredient cost...

Yup, bride rang the following week to ask her where her wedding gift was🙄🙄🤔🤔... As she didn't think this huge spectacular cake was 'enough'...

My jaw dropped when I heard ... Utter grabbiness and CF...

Don't think their friendship ever recovered.

I doubt they got you a gift.
My grandmother, who absolutely adored me, & loved my second husband, had a rule: only gift for a first wedding.
Enjoy the love you have in your life, material items come & go.

We had something like this at our wedding. When going through the gifts and cards afterwards so that I could write thank yous out, we found a knife with no tag and we had one very close friend who we didn’t appear to have anything from. I assumed the knife was from him, but didn’t want to write the wrong thing in the thank you card as thought that was rude. So we asked a couple of the others in that friendship group if they knew whether the knife was from him. They did some digging and came back to tell us that he said he hadn’t bought a gift at all.

So no idea who gave us the mystery knife, and 20+ years later still feel guilty that we didn’t thank him for a gift he may or may not have given us because I just can’t see how it could have been from anyone else?!

I don’t think you can say anything, but if you want to check that you aren’t being rude by not thanking them for something that has gone missing, do you have anyone that can drop into conversation with them a chat about the wedding and ask what they got you?

I presume, like me, you genuinely don’t mind if they didn’t get you a gift - you just feel mortified at maybe not thanking them for something if they didn’t get you a present and you didn’t realise?

If you’re a close family get your mum/dad (whoever’s side of the family) to mention to their sibling and casually ask what they got next time they speak to them.

If they aren’t close and don’t speak all that often, just drop it.

I had this, turns out the someone at the venue had gone through and taken money out of some of the cards. Any chance this could have happened?!

What a bitchy thing to say.

I love the people in life amd ill freely gift because it makes me happy to share joy.

I have similar people in my life because like attracts like.

I would message and say ‘thankyou for the card’. Then if they did get a gift and it got misplaced, it let’s them know and the would probably say ‘did you get our gift?’

It does sound like you’re demanding a gift & that’s your choice to put £500 behind the bar. We did a free bar, because we wanted to - not because we expected or wanted gifts 🥴 it’s not a big deal, let it go.