wedding invitation - "cash poem"

[s88]

currently starting our wedding invitations and dp wants to add in a poem about if people want to give a gift , then cash . I HATE IT !

he said we don't need stuff as have been living together for 9 years so I said maybe just out a note saying no gifts then but he doesn't agree .

what can I do ?

I'm late 20s and all my friends' weddings I have been to over the last few years have had gift lists. No one has asked for cash

I think there is a difference between a cultural tradition of giving cash at weddings (no one asks because it's just what happens), and asking for money when it is not part of your cultural tradition

That said I don't think I would be all that bothered if someone asks for cash - I just want to give them a gift that will be well-received and will be convenien for me, so gift list or cash are both easy

But all the people my age who have recently got married that I know have used gift lists, so it's not necessarily an age thing

I have been to gazillions of weddings ranging from society dos to teenagers who have their reception in the church hall and everyone brings a plate of food. All of them have included something in the invite about presents, whether a gift list, Trailfinders list, or a "we don't expect presents but are saving towards a house / conservatory / furniture" note. I'm very very grateful for saving me the hassle of phoning the B&G (or even worse, their parents - who are less and less involved with their children's weddings these days, and I have often never met before).

OP - fine to ask for cash but never in a poem or via a "cute" wishing well

I'm struggling with this too.

I think we are going to use [https://www.patchworkpresent.com/] as it feels a bit less grabby and has something tangible attached to it. I also like you can then thank people specifically for the bit they wanted to contribute towards, with a picture of that actual bit.

We are planning a Route 66 adventure for our honeymoon so it will be nice to say 'thanks for contributing to our helicopter ride over the canyon' or 'cheers for the American beers' rather than ' thanks for the cash that just went in the pot'

Seem to have lost the the ability to post links properly

When we got married, we had a lot of people asking us what we wanted as a wedding present so, when we sent out the invitations, we put an insert in the envelope along with the invitation with useful information on and a paragraph at the end which read: "The biggest gift you can give us is your attendance on our wedding day! All we really want is to have a lovely wedding which we can share with our family and friends. However, if you would like to gift us something to start our married life together, we would be delighted to receive vouchers for [department store] to help us furnish our new home." We ummed and ahhed about mentioning anything at all but we didn't get any negative comments from this. All of our friends and family knew we had bought our first home a few months before the wedding so it made sense.

Tbh I don't understand these huge meltdowns over people asking for Money as a wedding gift.

I'm from Belgium and Everyone knows that if you go to a wedding, you basically pay for your meal etc. Showing up with a gift is fine, but going empty handed would be spectacularly rude! Usually people just transfer the money to a couples bank account (always somewhere in small letters in an invitation) so they don't have to walk around with tons of cash.

I never thought of it as grabby, but like I said, this is how everyone does it here.

Poems are awful though...

Poems are terrible.

Rule that out right away.

We faced the same dilemma in as much as we definitely didn't want physical gifts, as we live abroad, so it would be a logistical nightmare trying to get any gifts back with us. At the same time, we will be setting up a more permanent home in a different country in the near future, so it would be nice to have some money to do that further down the line.

Since we are both totally awkward, we just didn't mention anything about gifts whatsoever on the invitation.

For my partner's side of the family we set up a website with information on logistics, hotels, etc, and had a section on gifts which basically said "we absolutely do not expect gifts from our guests, but if you would like to give us something, then we would be grateful for any cheques or vouchers to put towards our honeymoon or to set up our future home".

On my side of the family, I am guessing people just asked my parents, who were probably a bit less tactful.

I disagree it's a generational thing though - neither of my parents could understand why we would have any embarrassment whatsoever asking for money over gifts, as that has been the norm for every wedding they have been to in the last 20 years. One of my partner's uncles actively recommended that we ask for contributions for our honeymoon, and said that they did exactly the same thing a good 25 years ago.

My view is this: We don't expect people to give us gifts. They are not "funding" our wedding in any way, shape or form. If they genuinely want to give us a gift, then they will be happy to give us whatever we would find the most useful. If they aren't happy to do that, then they are only buying something due to convention, not for our happiness, in which case they just shouldn't get us anything. And we aren't going to think any less of them for doing so.

I think it's actually parents who might get a bit more irritated - if they have given cheques for X amount for a number of weddings for nieces and nephews or whatever, then your child gets nothing at their wedding, I can see how that would grate. Family politics eh.