When giving a wedding gift, you have 4 options:

1. Buy something off the person's registry
2. Give cash or gift card
3. Give something sentimental - even if it is just a card
4. Don't give anything

I mean, when you re-gift the ice bucket your company gave away on "picnic day", do you really think you're fooling somoene? The cheap towels you bought on sale that sorta look like the ones on the registry are just going into the rag bin. If you insist on doing this, at least provide a gift receipt.

I get it - it's a "gift" and the recipient should be grateful. It is not so much that this pisses me off, that I just don't get it. You are seriously better off just not giving anything (or if money is tight - get something simple and sentinmental). No matter how clever you think you are, the recipient probably hates it and is annoyed they have to write a thank-you card.

Personal opinion on wedding gifts - try to guess what it cost to buy your meal at the reception and give cash based on that cost. For example, if my date and I are around $30 each, I give around $100. I wish I could understand when cash became "impersonable". If every person coming to the wedding did that, I would dance a happy, happy jig.

I'm going to completely disagree here, but then again I'm weird. I allowed my wedding to be my mother's thing...since I'm an only daughter. My parents set a budget, and then my mother reset the budget to quite a shitload more. It's far more than honestly I think should be spent on something like that, but there were very very few things that were important to me regarding the ceremony, and it was something I believed was very important to her. The only thing I drove her nuts with was my general apathy on most things.

But what WAS important was the guest list. We had a huuuuge amount of people, and given the extent of the crap my mom was doing each guest was pretty expensive. But she was flexible there in that I wasn't going to have a situation of not having someone there important to me, or my spouse. And we had a ton of family come.

I didn't care what people bought me or how much shit was purchased on the registry. In two cases, I tore up checks that people gave us. In one case it was a cousin I was VERY close to as a child, and we found that bound between us existed now we were adults even though we hadn't seen each other as much as we'd wanted over the years. He and his wife came out, had to make arrangements for their kids and had just bought a home. Buying the tickets and paying for a hotel stretched them to the limit...but he really wanted to give me a gift. I talked with his wife about it and told her to tell him I tore it up and why (and she thanked me profusely). Their 'gift' to me was simply being there, and it really was. The other case was one of my best friends who was in my wedding party. I picked a dress which was nice (they all liked it) under $125 dollars, and could be used again (wasn't ridiculous). But the money for that and other shit stretched her budget. She didn't have a lot of money, and yet on top of it tried to give me money as a wedding gift. Sooo not necessary.

Anyway, for me my wedding wasn't a way to finance my new life. I had bought my home before I married anyway. It wasn't a way to wring cash out of friends and family. It was a celebration, and I'd much rather have someone 'regift' some stupid ass company wine bucket than not attend due to financial reasons.

YMMV.

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I think you missed my point Tarot.

I specifically said - feel free to do something sentimental. It's not about the gift or the money. And trust me, unless you have a wedding in your backyard, you will always spend more than you get in gifts. That's not the point.

The point is, don't give crappy gifts thinking you're fooling someone

Bah, can't edit....
It's more the people who are "fronting".
I would serioulsy prefer a card than a re-gifted ice bucket that I toss in the trash.

Anyway, I do get what you're saying, and of course it's not about "wringing money" out of people.

Ah I completely misunderstood. I just tend to assume in situations like that, that perhaps there's a side to it I'm not aware of such as money problems or a cheap ass spouse who's a douche.

My bad though, I've heard too many people where I live piss and moan about not getting enough, as though a wedding is a game show where they're supposed to get fabulous prizes. I've also heard people talk about how much they can expect to 'make'. I've known people who view it as a money maker.

I don't attend most weddings.

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I have heard however that the money dance pays for people's vacations~

The point of all this is: Don't get married.

What if that guy was in the ice bucket business? Now you look like an asshole.

Are there still places to get married at $30 a head? I thought everything was closer to 100 a plate these days.

$30 a plate... depends.

You can go all the way from $10 a person to $100+ a person.

To me, the whole thing is ridiculous. I feel like we are being conservative and we are in the neighborhood of $65 a head.

I've been to 3 weddings in the last month and a half. I have given gifts to none of them.

Circumstances:

All are "lifelong" friends that I've known for 10+ years. In their wedding signing book my wife and I initialed our names, but in our gift card we just wrote the honest truth. Pretty much went something like this:

"Hiya!

We're so glad we're able to celebrate this day with you guys. If we could give something, we would. As you know, we're planning on relocating our entire family out of state and that's proven a rough task. If you should ever feel compelled to ask for something in the future of us, do not feel hesitant. For both of our families, happier days are indeed in store."

Those weren't the exact words, but you get the picture.

PS: We only gave 250$ to each couple. I don't know if that is cheap or not, but it's all we could afford. Hopefully it gives them something to start with. Lord knows we need more than that to live our lives.

If you gave them $250 each, that counts as a gift, and I think a very nice one.

Give the gift that keeps on giving: a wire coat hanger.