I agree. I work for a wedding planner. We always strenuously, STRENUOUSLY, encourage couples to avoid putting registry information in their invitations, and it is pretty damn rare that they do it anyway. Maybe 5% of weddings.
What is much, much more common these days is to include a slip of paper in the invitation giving the wedding website–there’s a bunch of online places to do it–where guests can access registry information. However, the wedding website also does a lot of other functions–gives the names and relationships of the bridal party, offers maps and directions to the ceremony/reception sites, offers lists of nearby hotels/restaurants/attractions, pictures of the couple or a “how we met” story, whatever.
It is always in bad taste to include registry information on the invitation. However, if a couple wants to do a honeymoon registry instead…meh. I can’t get too exercised over it. Yeah, in this specific instance, it’s kind of tacky, but as a rule it’s pretty far down on the list of tacky shit we see.
Not seeing any real difference there. A two click rule instead of one.
I’ve never been to a wedding where the registry wasn’t included in the invitation. I mean, what did people do before the internet, and why should the internet suddenly create some new rule of etiquette?
If you were on the bride’s side, you called up her mother/close female relative and asked, on the groom’s side, his mother/close female relative. If you were a friend, you asked a mutual friend closer to the wedding (bridesmaid or such).
So to hijack a little with a related wedding question:
What do y’all think of socials? In Manitoba, there’s a tradition where the couple will rent out a hall, get a liquor license and DJ/band and set up a silent auction or some other entertainment and then sell tickets and use the money to pay for the wedding. Because there’s a lot of smaller communities involved, your Saturday night social will probably be the main event in a 25-mile radius so you get lots of attendees. It isn’t just for people attending the wedding, it’s for whoever can pay the cover charge.
Innovative way to pay for a wedding, or just bad taste?
For one recent wedding, I didn’t have the registry info, but I just checked the websites for the usual suspects (Bed, Bath and Beyond; Crate and Barrel; Macy’s; etc) and found where they’d registered.
As mentioned, they opened their mouths and asked–the bride’s mother or sister, or the groom’s mom, or a bridesmaid, or the happy couple themselves. Or you figured that everyone in town was registered at the same Big Department Store or whatever and looked there. It’s not a huge elusive puzzle for most people–I honestly can say that almost all the huffing and puffing over how difficult it is to access registry information is online. Somehow, most people in the real world manage to figure it out with about 0.02 seconds of effort.
Maybe it’s regional, but I can’t remember ever seeing the registry in the invitation. Ever. It’s generally regarded as tacky, as is any mention of gifts in any way, even saying something along the lines of “no gifts please.”
Before the internet, and even currently, the general procedure is, as mentioned above, to ask the bride’s mom, the maid of honor (or a bridesmaid in general), etc. When we were getting married, I had three friends ask me directly, but we weren’t registered anywhere because, well, we’re in our mid-30s and have everything we need. I just told these people that if they want to bring a gift, a nice bottle of wine or scotch is always appreciated.
I guess the consensus is that it’s in bad taste to include the gift request in the invitation, so I can accept that. But, I just don’t see why it’s a huge deal to do basically the same thing at a later date. Maybe I just don’t get it, but if I am basically obligated to buy a gift, and I know that the gift recipient wants x (whether it be money or a crock pot), why wouldn’t I just get that? Additionally, knowing I need to get a gift, why would I be upset enough to not attend because they told me what they wanted on the invitation instead of me having to ask later? I have to think this is, in part, a generational thing.
That said, decent chunk the OP had nothing to do with etiquette at all. It was about how old the bride is, how she is terrible with money, and how she can’t manage to save for vacations like the rest of their group. I am not sure why anyone needed that information, and I have to wonder if some of the OP’s annoyance is due to those issues as opposed to the etiquette breach.
I have absolutely no problem with it, and I’m usually the first to scream about anything tacky. They already have more than enough crap, and this line IS in the invitation:
Hear, hear! Our invitation list consisted of 1) people we really wanted to be there, and 2) few enough people so we could actually talk to all of them. That meant no aunts, uncles and cousins. Everyone except her parents had to travel to get there, so we wanted them to have a good time.
Though if everyone did it this way the economy would crash and wedding halls would go broke.
Oh, it will definitely have gone in everyone’s invitation. She already knows what my gift is, yet she still included it.
The introductory piece in the OP was just to give some context to the situation - about why they need other people to pay for their holiday. I’ve thought a lot about what annoys me about this. I think it would annoy me less if they had the honeymoon booked and were asking for extras to make it special. I think it would also annoy me less if they’d made a bit more effort to make it appear less “You don’t really have to buy us anything, honest, but please buy us this vacation!!”. And I’ll never figure out why they included the slip of paper AND the paragraph on the instructions. Asking for cash in your wedding invite once may be a breach of etiquette, but twice?
I don’t see anything wrong with a honeymoon registry per se. My friends had one and I thought it was kind of cute. You could pick out specific things to give them - for example, a dinner at a particular restaurant, or a tour of a special place. I don’t know or care if they actually used the cash for those specific purposes, but I didn’t think it was that different from buying them gifts.
I do think there is a tacky way to go about asking for gifts/money for a wedding, though. Having a “wish jar” or a dollar dance seems a bit too grabby. Wedding websites seem to be the best way to go about it nowadays.
What does being 48, never having been married before, living with her fiance for 7 years, or the the fact that she owns the house they live in have to do with anything? Listen, I am not saying you are wrong, or that what this lady did was in good taste, but I tend to think it’s telling when people include irrelevant details that might color the situation while telling a story. It’s kinda like when people always mention the race of a person in a story when telling a story to other people. My neighbor, a nice Hispanic guy, was outside… It just makes me wonder why they are even bothering to mention since it makes little practical difference.
Point taken, but is etiquette REALLY that important to you? Considering you are outing your close friend’s “appalling behavior” on the internet rather than speaking to her directly, I have to wonder if there is more about this that bothers you than just an etiquette breach.
The fact that they are forty-something homeowners who have lived together for seven years is surely 100% relevant to this story.
As for venting about it on the internet, I tried to tell her beforehand that this might not be the best thing to do, and she has gone ahead and done it. There is now no point whatsoever talking to her about it; the stable door is closed, the horse has bolted. The invites are out. It annoyed me, so I wanted to rant and see if anyone else would be annoyed, so turned to the anonymity of the internet.
People who get married in their forties after having already lived together in a home they own don’t need many of the traditional gifts that one would give at a wedding. Those traditional gifts were meant for a young couple just starting out on their own, typically when both are moving from their parents’ houses for the first time.
I generally disagree given that you could have just said, they don’t need the gifts.
Fair enough. Didn’t realize you’d advised against it beforehand.
Maybe this is a generational thing, but I know very few people getting married at 30 that NEED traditional wedding gifts. It’s often crap like small appliances and sentimental things like photo albums and china that people either don’t want, or don’t need regardless of their age. I would bet a good percentage of non-registry gifts are returned or never used. I would also bet many more gifts would be returned if the recipients were able to do so, or weren’t afraid of offending someone.
Again, people getting married at thirty are not, typically, " a young couple just starting out on their own." Presumably by that age, they’ve lived on their own for a few years and have their households already set up. My comment was about when a couple goes from their parents’ houses directly to the married house.
I’d have worded it differently, but I see it as being no more or less tacky than having a wedding registry. I mean, a 40+ year old bride will already have a toaster, so what’s left to give? They could have said nothing and gotten a bunch of random gift cards, but at the end of the day I’d be far more upset if I sent a gift card and it sat in a drawer, than if I contributed towards a vacation that I know they’d actually enjoy. But then again, I value experiences over things, so travel is very meaningful to me.
So I have zero problems at all being directed to a honeymoon site. In fact, I recently paid for an all-day fishing charter for our friend’s son after being directed to their HoneyMoney site. The only difference is that it was listed on their wedding website, along with traditional sites, such as Target and Macys. My husband and his friend and his son are all big outdoorsy people, so it seemed like a nice tribute to the happy couple.
The average age for people getting married for the first time is 27 for women and 29 for men, so 30 is not some ridiculous outlier. Even at 27, most people have lived away from home, and likely have all the pots and pans they need to live. They likely have two of all those things since the spouse probably has their own too. Additionally, many of those couples live together before marriage anyway. I think the idea that marrying couples need “typical” wedding presents is antiquated at his point. The idea that a large percentage of couples are both going from the parents house to a new place is old thinking.
Regardless, the bride’s age has no bearing on whether an etiquette breach occurred, so it’s not really germane to the discussion.
It reminds me of the pioneer days when people had raising the roof parties. They have a big outdoor party and everyone for miles would come and help put the roof up after the man of the family had already put up the four walls of the cabin. There would be plenty of food and music.
For what you describe, as there is nothing to do for miles and people are anxious for a party, I don’t have a problem with it. It helps out everybody.