Wedding Gift List - What to Do??

[OrangesandLemons88]

Another wedding question from me - I am on a roll at the moment!

What is the general consensus on gifts / wedding lists these days?
This question is mainly for people aged 20's & 30's / millenials who have been to numerous weddings over recent years - I mean no offence older MN users but I know this is a rapidly changing aspect of weddings at the moment...

Neither me or my DP are keen on having a registry / gift list. We earn a reasonable amount together and don't feel to comfortable requesting gifts.

We are setting up a wedding website and need to say something about wedding gifts as people have already started asking.

Our thoughts are:

a) say "no gifts". The cons are that some kind people may still insist on buying and we end up with things / toasters / home bits etc we don't really want

b) say no gifts but if anyone insists then we would value a donation to charity of our choice. The cons of this are people might not think out is personal enough and may still want to buy a gift??

c) Say no gifts and for those who insist suggest a donation to a cause my fiancé and I are both involved in (a local charity we volunteer with)

d) Say no gifts but if anyone insists we would value contributions to our honeymoon fund (uncomfortable with this one)

It would be great to hear what others have done and general consensus.

Really some people in RL do think it's CFery too.

If you mean 'please' don't buy me anything you word it to leave no doubt and leave it as that. Anything else is clearly being disingenuous.

I'm late 30s, since my friends/ relatives all started getting married about 15 years ago I must have been to 25 weddings at least, including at home, abroad, big, small, all day invite and evening invite. Every single one of them had some mention of gifts either on the invitation or with accompanying information in the same envelope. I think about 3 were traditional gift lists (Debenhams/ John Lewis type) and the rest were some form of request for cash.

I genuinely don't mind requests for cash, I'm aware that whenever this comes up on mumsnet people find it horrifyingly rude but I've never come across anyone else that's batted an eye, even older relatives. The one I found rude were the Debenhams gift list which just came as a card with the link to the list on, for a wedding abroad, with nothing on the list less than £50, and for which we never received any form of thank you neither for attending, nor for our gift.

As for the rest, they're just so normal that I don't really give it much thought. I expect to give couples a gift for their wedding. I WANT to. I might have rolled my eyes a bit at coughing up £80 towards an already well off couple's 'super fabby amazing honeymoon to Dubia and the Maldives' when the furthest I'd managed in the last few years was Blackpool, but then it's a wedding and you give a gift anyway, might as well be something they want.

Personally we will go down the don't mention it route, and don't expect anything, just because I'll be 40 by the time we actually do it, it will be a small wedding and it will just feel weird asking. If people do ask/ chase us then we might have a small list in case people insist, or since it's likely to be my close family/ friends we could probably just tell them something we would actually like just like I do when they ask what we want for birthdays/ Christmas. Not big things just like a plant for the garden or something.

Option c

Hi OP, I'm a "millennial" (31), got married 4 weeks ago. We didn't put any mention of gifts on the invite at all, just the wedding and RSVP details. The 'contributions to our honeymoon fund' poem/request doesn't sit well with me (I know some wedding invite recipients prefer to know a couple would prefer cash over a gift, but...it feels grabby to me) and Gift Lists are a dated custom (and would have been an additional task to do) I feel.

Had calls from 2 family members on DH's side asking what we would like, we said "anything" and they said "will we just give you some £ in a card?" and again we said "honestly we don't mind".

We had 140 guests, 90% gave us money in a card; the rest a gift(s) and a few guests (close friends and family) both money and a gift to open. We got beautiful presents that we will actually use and treasure - I think the days of receiving 'tat' or ending up with 4 irons/kettles are gone - and most give money to let the couple decide how to spend it; or go for gifts they'd actually make use of.

The £ we received will go towards our honeymoon and new flooring for our living room; don't put "no gifts" unless you genuinely don't want any!