This thread got me wondering what most people consider a good amount to spend on wedding presents.
I got the impression most people spend hundreds of dollars on a wedding present. Is that a false impression? Let’s assume this is for some average middle-class joe, not a doctor/lawyer/high-powered pyramid scheme salesman/etc, and not someone making minimum wage flipping burgers. Also, let’s assume this is for a close but not best friend.
Hundreds of dollars? In my family, only if they’re your kids.
I’d say under $100 for everyone; under $50 if they’re not close friends.
About $50 is my normal limit, unless the bride/groom is a very good friend.
Oh, I don’t feel so cheap, then. Yay! I spent about $40 on my friend’s wedding present, and I guess I’ll probably spend another $30-$40 on her shower present.
I just spent around $40 last night here yesterday for the oldest son and his bride to be of my best buddy from high school. I rarely spend over $75 unless they are family.
I’m cheap, around $40. Parsimony, and being a crabby old spinster, keeps me from being invited to too many bonding rituals, thank Buddha!
This is a good time to revive an old tagline: Thanks for inviting me to your shower! Here’s your prize for finding a man!
i’m young, i spend all my student loan on non important things like presents instead of sensible stuff like rent. i spent £120 on my best friend recently, thats like $200? i didnt eat much that month.
One general rule of thumb I’ve heard is that you should give a gift worth no less than the cost of the meal you get at the reception.
That’s an interesting one that I’ve never heard before. How are you supposed to know the cost of the meal at the reception?
I’ve been to several weddings where, in fact, we guests have taken the bride and groom out to a restaurant for the reception and paid for it ourselves. Would that mean no wedding present was expected?
You approximate, based on the location, which of course you know from the invitation. If you know the reception is going to consist of punch and cookies in the church basement, the gift could be more modest than if you see that the invitation is at the El Swanko Country Club on Aristocrat Drive.
Of course, one can always give more than the venue would indicate, depending on other factors. But IMHO it’s a bit chintzy to give $10 or $20 as a gift when you’re being treated to a live band or top DJ, a 4-course dinner and an open bar for 5 hours preceded by a cocktail party on the way from the church. Obviously, if your own circumstances are very modest, then you adjust as well, and presumably your hosts understand.
Well, if it’s just about an evening’s entertainment, I’d rather go to a restaurant/bar/polka barn of my own choosing and eat/dance to whatever I want. But I don’t think marriage ceremonies are primarily about the entertainment programme.
It’s not that hard, really; unless the couple’s on the other side of the country and you don’t know them, you can pretty much tell from how elaborate the wedding’s going to be what it’ll cost. A pricey reception will run the hosts $50 a plate; most run $25-30 or so. The church basement/lunch reception variety will be cheaper. Open bars, add $10-15 a head. The most expensive I’ve ever seen cost them $100 a head (it wasn’t worth it, btw.)
I would agree with MLS that it’s rude to give someone a gift worth less than the evening’s entertainment and meal. If you don’t think a wedding reception’s worth it as a form of entertainment, send your regrets well in advance and don’t go, and then if you still send a gift it can be as cheap as you like.
Depends on who the bride and groom is and if I actually go to the wedding. About 50 is average. If I don’t go to the wedding, this usually means I didn’t really like the couple much and so I might send 25. I have spent more, but only on people special to me.
I’ve heard this one, and I don’t buy it.
I’ve also heard of brides who total up the supposed cost of all their gifts and try to figure out if they ‘broke even’ on the cost of the wedding.
A gift is just that - a gift, given freely, given from the heart. It is not some sort of admission ticket into the wedding.
Why should the cost of your meal be any indicator of what you’re ‘supposed’ to spend?
I heard that rule as well. However, you don’t know until you get there whether or not you’re having surf ‘n’ turf or the dried-out chicken breast.
I say go with your wallet first; then your heart. I won’t spend more than I can comfortably afford, but I’ll spend more on someone who’s close to me.
I generally don’t like to go under $50, but for some reason, my husband prefers the odd $40 gift. Boy, does that figure grate on me.
If I host a party (birthday or otherwise) I make it clear that gifts are optional and that I consider it already a present that my guests spend the money and time to come visit me in the most southern tip of the Netherlands. I think I get the message across: I hardly get gifts, and if I do, they’re usually self-made, or just cheap fun, like my mom giving me a second-hand book on the housefly after I’d given her a hard time about her low cleaningstandards. 
In the same vein, I prefer to spend little money on “official” gifts for friends. There’s something about gifts being expected that takes all the fun out of gift-giving for me. I prefer to spend a lot of care and sometimes money on surprise gifts instead. A few weeks ago, I ordered a beautiful classic straw Panama hat for $ 80 for my dad, who is getting bald and needs it for the sun. It’s from a special store that carries larger sizes for my dad’s big skull. I ordered it just because I came across it and thought he’d like it. I’ll probably forget to give him something when his birthday officially rolls around.
So, back to the OP; I’d probably toss 25 dollars in the “money tree” at the wedding to cover the money they spent on me, minus what I spent travelling.
But I’d give the couple something nice instead, later. Like a gift certificate for an customized organized trip to my hometown, including dinner and a stay in a B&B. Another example: when I stayed with another friend of mine, I noticed they lacked a garbage-bin. They just had the garbagebag propped up against the frindge. I borrowed a car and got one for them. Bins are not expensive, but cumbersome to get home when you don’t own a car, as these innercity-dwellers didn’t.
I generally spend between $30-$50, depending on how close I am to the couple. If I’m not going to the wedding, I spend less, if I even get around to sending a gift. The only exception I made was for my best friend, who I spent about $150 on, but that was because she wouldn’t let me give her the $90 for my bridesmaid’s dress. See, she insisted that she hadn’t paid my mom for her bridesmaid’s dress for my wedding three years prior (and my mom and I insisted she had), so she wasn’t going to let me pay for mine. I figured out my own way to pay her back and bought a crapload of stuff off her registry.
I usually spend between $15-$20 on a shower gift, sometimes a little less if I’m going together on a gift with someone else or a group of people.
Don’t you just hate weddingregistries? The china and glasses in those stores are just so damned expensive: 50 dollars will buy me exactly two eggholders and one teaspoon.
My own complete set of earthenware dishes, perfectly usabel and very nice looking, I bought at IKEA for less then 50 bucks. :rolleyes:
I forgot to make this point; generally speaking, if someone has to go to great trouble and expense to get there, they can pretty much spend as little as they want on the gift. That goes triple if they’re in the wedding party. If your buddy busts his ass to come from Vancouver to your wedding in Raleigh and spends three days with you getting tuxes and all that crap, that’s gift enough.
Well, around here most people register at Target or Wal-Mart ($50 will get you a lot at those places!). People simply just don’t have much money where I live. In recent years, most of the people I’ve known who got married didn’t even register for china. We didn’t. We registered for dishes, but not real china. It was much less expensive, and we actually use them. We registered for silverware at Target.