I guess. I make handmade gifts for weddings and babies since cash passes away but a thoughtful gift lasts. Here I thought they made people happy, but I guess it’s all about me. Maybe that’s why I still haven’t gotten a thank-you note from that August wedding.
You say “ideally,” and maybe that’s the fantasy for the Platonic ideal of Barbie’s Dream Wedding, but let’s be realistic here. Most wedding invite lists include lots of people who aren’t on intimate enough terms to be able to guess what they’ll really find most useful, and I’d feel really shitty about implicitly asking everyone on the invite list to call up my poor mom or whichever family member this tedious and potentially socially fraught obligation falls on. Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t this the exact trouble that gift registries were originally invented to circumvent? I bet Miss Manners thought those were trashy too once upon a time, but they’ve caught on very well anyway because farming out the task to a disinterested party is just so much easier on everyone than the old-fashioned ways were.
Weddings are a tremendous drain on everyone even tangentially involved in the planning and I think that as much should be done to both ameliorate and, within reason, to mitigate that effort and expense on their part. The truth of the matter is that weddings aren’t really fully voluntary affairs. Social and familial senses of obligation push many couples into taking on much more work and responsibility than they’d really like. Hell, if I have a wedding at all, it’ll only be because of how much it would upset my mom if I didn’t. Coupled with that, “traditional” weddings usually represent a crippling financial outlay that it just doesn’t make sense to foist upon a new family in exchange for a bunch of stuff they they probably need a lot less than they need money for a house down-payment. (I suspect that the cost of real-estate relative to the average couple’s yearly income has increased considerably since Grandma’s time.)
Now, granted, if the couple in the OP are asking for honeymoon massage money, they’re probably not hurting too much for funds. But not everyone who gets married can afford to take that kind of a hit, and I feel like a lot of these etiquette rules kind of assume you’re some kind of 19th-century upper-class aristocrat socialite and none of your female family members have day jobs.
I don’t think it’s tacky at all because it flat out says they aren’t expecting anything from anyone other than their presence.
They are lying, of course.
oops wrong username…
^^ sorry
I’m not of fan of cash registries or putting registry information on the invitation. But that said, I think you have to just let it go. She’s 48, if she’s always like this then the people at her wedding are used to it. It’s also possible that she is from a community where this is more accepted and commonplace, so this will actually not turn into some giant embarrassing fiasco for her. If you personally feel put out then you can just not give a gift, likewise all the other guests can give a card or a picture frame if they are not happy with the message in the invitation. And then you can back away slowly the next time someone asks you to be a bridesmaid.
I would also disagree that the best way to handle questions about gifts is to direct people to you. If people ask her about gifts she should answer them. Ideally she should have a better reply than a cash registry but that’s a separate issue than how they find out.
Oh, in that case, fuck those douche bags.
Tacky tacky tacky and all of a tackiness 
As you say, this is purely a case of “oh, we have more than we need and actually need to de-clutter, but do please pay for a big expensive holiday (vacation, if anyone prefers) for us”.
And you’re right to remark that the guests do have certain costs to meet in order even to go to the wedding - transport, accommodation and all that. Oh, and possibly having to use a day or two’s leave from work too. I think they are being greedy and grabby, really.
Perhaps they are just too caught up in the delightful charming sparkly wonder of this true love that they are a bit blinded to how it seems.
Nah, see that last little sentence? I said that with my charitable, always-think-well-of-others hat on. However, it doesn’t fit me at all well and falls off very quickly. 
So, yes, I vote for “tacky”.
Also, it’s very possible that their wedding guests might be financially uncomfortable in this whole current “austerity - we’re in it together” shit, so it’s all a bit uncouth. I **do **quite see, as others have said, that they say “the most important thing to us is that you can come to share our day, so there’s no obligation to give us anything.” But it goes straight on to “However, if you want to make a contribution we have set up the following site to help us raise enough for our planned honeymoon next year…”, and to me, the bit after ‘however’ screams a bit more loudly than the polite bit preceding it.
I see that you are head bridesmaid. Oh dear. I fear you are going to feel uncomfortable and a bit bad about it, but you are NOT the one committing the tackiness.
Grrr! Can’t they simply trot off to the registry office and hold a party after it some time? This dream honeymoon shit would be bad enough from a couple of starry-eyed 18 year-olds but for adults who have been together for years … well, pretty pathetic, really.
Ah, I just realised. Been together for years and don’t need toasters and stuff but do want a bloody expensive holiday with other peoplel paying for it? They are playing at being Kate Middleton and Prince William. 
Honestly, the custom I believe is that you have up to a year to provide a wedding gift. It doesn’t have to be presented at the wedding. So if these folks even made the slightest hint that they were upset I didn’t give them a gift or donate to the fund, they would get nothing. But if they seemed genuinely happy that I came to the wedding and didn’t mention the lack of a gift/donation, then I’d be more than happy to supply a monetary gift.
If they are really lying about not caring whether or not you give them a gift, then it’ll probably come out eventually or maybe they are just very fantastic liars, which sucks but what can you do?
All I know is that if the bride asks for cash from the groom before the marriage is consummated, that can be a very bad sign.
Oh, perhaps the bride demand cash in another form. Like a diamond ring.
Oh, like a barter system.
Yeah, it’s tacky.
But not quite as tacky as the daughter of an acquaintance who lived at home until she was 25, moved out with her boyfriend for a year, moved back home with him, threw a cheap-arse wedding in the backyard and asked for ‘contributions to the purchase of their first home’ on the wedding invitations.
This, from two people with full-time jobs, living rent free.
17 months later, they, and their 3-month-old baby are still living with the parents. 4 months ago they bought themselves a holiday home - mostly funded by the wedding day cash grab.
Admittedly, asking for money under any circumstance always gets a tinfoil trophy from me - and if I were the 48-year-old, I’d want people think of me as a bride, not a beggar.
I still think people should give them some consideration that they weren’t actually asking for money. They were just asking for your presence at the wedding. But, being the polite people that they are, they understand some people are REALLY going to want to bring presents to a wedding, to the point that not accepting presents at all would be seen as rude. So they offered a way for people to give something they really wanted, using a website established for that purpose, evidently (I haven’t looked into it).
I don’t think it was tacky or rude, based on the way it was phrased and how the money would be collected.
Rank bullshit nonsense.
They volunteered the idea of people giving them (not an in-lieu-of worthy cause) money. In an event context for which people would conventionally give a gift.
They absolutely expect people to chip in on their holiday tab. They think they are entitled to this, and they will be some combination of puzzled, annoyed, or offended if their ‘guests’ and ‘friends’ fail to substantially follow instructions.
And I’ve never understood the stance that “Don’t put down your list of demands in the invitation”= “Make finding out what you want a huge, horrible Secret Squirrel mission for the guests.” We live in the age of 473 bajillion ways to get in contact with someone. If you know and like the couple well enough to want to contribute to their happiness, you know them well enough to call, or text, or email, or IM, or Facebook, or tweet, or whatever one of them (or know their parents’ names and can FB one of them, if you feel the bride and groom are too busy to be bothered hearing from you*) and ask what they’d like. The last time I needed to buy a wedding or shower gift, it took me approximately 45 seconds to pull up the recipient’s name on FB and ask “Where you registered, hon?” If she hadn’t been on FB, it would have taken about the same amount of effort to call/text/email her or her mom.
Yes, weddings are emotionally and financially draining and steps should be taken to minimize how draining they are. Those steps should be taken by the people planning the goddamn wedding. I’ve actually planned a wedding, and I know all about all the pressure and bullshit and all the expensive, pain-in-the-ass things people try to convince you is absolutely 100% MANDATORY at a wedding. If we’d done all the stuff our families and the wedding-industrial complex had tried to convince we simply must do, I’d have been in the funny farm by the time the wedding rolled around, and we’d have been paying the damn thing off for years.
We didn’t do 95% of the things people tried to talk us into, because WE HAD THE WEDDING WE COULD AFFORD, both in terms of time/effort and expense. If someone is not having the wedding they can afford, that is quite simply not my problem to solve. There’s nothing I could do to help solve it anyway, since the actual problem isn’t the time or money or mental energy being expended–the actual problem is that they don’t have the sense or the spine to set reasonable boundaries and stay within those boundaries. Them presenting me with an invoice for my share of the wedding, or me ponying up, isn’t going to actually accomplish shit.
*I have never, ever seen the bride or groom so busy they minded spending a few minutes talking to someone they liked enough to invite to their wedding.
Referencing gifts in a wedding invitation is tacky. There is now way around it.
It’s not a big secret that you can ask a relative or even the couple themselves about gifts. That’s just the process, and there is nothing hush hush or weird about it.
At that point you can mention where you are registered, or mention that you have everything you need and are just hoping to see your friends. People are not idiots. if you are a 30 year old professional whose been living with your fiancé for three years, it’s not rocket science that you won’t need a toaster.
Most people will default to cash, and that’s fine. Wedding gifts are a tradition and while you wouldn’t expect a certain dollar amount from a certain person, it’s fine to guess you’ll probably walk away from the wedding with some money.
Wow - what a lot of responses and debate. This is why I love the Dope. And - unsurprisingly - most people seem to be on the same page as me.
I have to reply to this one:
I would just maybe agree with this, if the only mention of gifts was on the “additional information” sheet with transport details, hotel suggestions etc. Even then the Honeyfund website was in bold type. But remember they also put in a little business card sized piece of paper with the Honeyfund logo and website on it and this was the first thing that fell out of the invite. The very fact they are planning a vacation they can’t afford says to me they are expecting this money.
And I still say it’s a vacation (sorry for not speaking 'merican in my OP) rather than a honeymoon - it will be over a year after their wedding. They’re going for a short break in a lodge in the north of Scotland straight after their wedding.
Also, for those who misinterpreted my post as a “what should I do about a gift”, I already have a very thoughtful (and not inexpensive) gift purchased - two tickets to see Rush.
And I’m not looking for any advice on what to do - I just wanted to find out if the general opinion here was as appalled as I am. I will not be doing or saying anything regarding this to the couple or our circle of friends. Regard yourselves as a great big sounding-board for me to rant at.
Disclosure: I got married in a registry office with two friends. I wore a black T shirt. We went out to a restaurant afterwards. My wedding ring was £30, and we never bothered with an engagement ring. I wanted a marriage, not a Wedding. This may make me biased regarding any arguments that they deserve cash gifts because of all of the expense and hassle of planning a Wedding.
Regarding transport, you’re not even supposed to bring the gift to the reception, but instead send it to the home either before or after the event.