My roommates are getting married! 
(They own a house. I rent their basement. No, I am not a troll, Hobbit, or otherwise sub-surface dwelling dwarf. I just rent the basement.)
I got my invitation yesterday, and the ceremony will be here in town in August. I will have moved to Montana by then (I move in July), but I plan on coming back and celebrating with a whole lot of other friends that are planning on coming too.
Here’s my dilemma: I’m a single, swingin’ bachelor with a somewhat fixed paycheck. Things will be relatively tight the first month or so after the move, but I want to get them something. I bought a fairly nice dining room set once, and it’s sitting in the dining room (we share stuff 'round here. I’ve got dining room set, household tools, some other appliances, they have living room furniture–you get the idea).
I know they like using the dining room set, and could definitely use it, but they’ve made the comment before that they might want to get another one that matches some of the other furniture or the hardwood floors. In any case, I had quietly offered to leave my dining room set ($400) as due tithe to my newlywed frieds. What if they don’t want it? What if they would be happier or could find more use with something else? My cashflow might not be what I think it will be, so should I think of something else? Should I buy a present at all (maybe go halfsies with someone else)?
Questions abound. What’s the etiquette book say (I don’t have one)?
Tripler
What to do, what to do. . .
My advice is to find out where they’re registered and go from there. Most registries list gifts at different price points, so you can choose something that’s reasonably within your budget. (I know all about those fixed incomes, brother!)
Failing that, you might try a gift card to somewhere like Bed, Bath and Beyond or a department store so they can pick their own gift.
Robin
Let’s get back to the whole premise of gift giving here. While I have no problem with gift registries, in fact I usually count on them when pressed into buying a gift, they are not a requirement. You buy a newlywed couple a gift as a symbolic way to help them begin their life together as a couple. To give them smoother sailing in setting up a household together. This does not change if the couple is already cohabitating.
I can’t answer for you whether or not your freinds will want to use the dining set. It is a fairly large and quite appropriate wedding gift though. For someone in your financial situation I think it would be very generous. There is where your obligation ends. No one can guarentee that their gift will be exactly to taste of the recipient.
If they were to say, “We hate that set and can’t wait for it to be gone,” then it would no longer be a good option. But even if they only use it for a few years until they decide to redecorate it will have been a usefull gift. Probably more useful than 90% of the gifts they get that day.
I would work the couple.
Ask him what she would really, really like.
Then ask her what he would really, really like.
Ask about the dining room set. Tell them you can’t take it with you, but you would like to be able to give it to them as a gift.
If they have no problem with it, and are desperately poor as most newlyweds are, they just might be estatic over such a gift. ( I know we were when my husband’s boss gave us his 30 year old kitchen table and chairs when we married - not as a wedding gift - but we had that table for the first 8 years of our marriage.)Then you could give them a gift certificate for some good carry out food. (Or a huge box of Ramen Noodle Soup.)
Also remember that you have a year to give them their gift, so you can always wait a bit until your cash flow situation improves.
The dining room set would be a great gift!
However, if they don’t want/need it, I feel that weddings are one of the few times that I feel that cash is acceptable. It doesn’t have to be $400 or anything like that. $50 – $100 is around the norm for a “friend”, if you can wing it. It can be tough finding the “right” gift for a couple that already pretty much has everything. As most couples do if they’ve already been out on their own for a few years.
I was in your position a few years back. If you are attending the service and reception, $100.00 to $125.00 is a good way to go (this was explained to me as the general per-head cost of the catering, so the couple “breaks even” on you). Registry (especially online) is also a good idea, because then you can buy a gift or gifts (or even part of a gift) in the amount you have to spend.
If worst comes to next, you can always leave a card at the gift table thanking them for inviting you and explaining that you had to special-order the gift and that it is being ordered/shipped. That buys you a few weeks to actually scrape up the money to buy a gift. I did this at a birthday party and no one was the wiser (until now).
Miss Manners would be appalled at the concept of “paying” for your invitation with a gift of equal cost. I never heard any such rule myself nor would it have occurred to me.
A gift is just that - something from the giver to the recipient. It’s not required under any circumstance. But when you want to give a gift to someone, you try to pick out something they would enjoy. In the case of “someone who has everything”, I think a gift card or certificate is acceptable, whether for a particular store or to a favorite restaurant or perhaps tickets to a play or concert.
I’m assuming that since they’re roommates, you know them fairly well. It shouldn’t be that hard to come up with something you know they’d like, regardless of cost. Seems to me that friends don’t care how much you spend, and those who care what you spend aren’t really friends, are they? Just one point of view here…
Heck, I’d just out and out ask them. If they’re good enough friends that you’re flying back to be at their wedding, you’re probably close enough for that level of candor. There’ve been times I’ve given ‘used’ things as gifts. Friends have admired something of mine and I gave it to them. Provenance doesn’t mean much to me and my circle of friends since it’s the thought that counts (cheesy but true). And once it’s theirs, what they do with it years from now isn’t your dealio anymore, yay!
I’d leave out the part about money being tight. You wouldn’t want them to feel obliged to accept the set and it might make them feel guilty that you’ve got the price of a plane ticket to their wedding on top of moving expenses.
racekarl, good point. . .
I think you guys are right. I think maybe I’ll politely pack up the dining room set, attend the services, and send something back as a gift. They’ve been really good friends, so maybe I’ll check the registries to see if there’s something they could really use.
It’s gotta be something they might use on a daily basis, so they can say, “Gee, that Tripler, whatta guy. . .” (ruling out avocado-green potholders). What are some typical ideas? What did you guys get that you felt was pretty thoughtful?
Tripler
And to reiterate, I am not a sub-surface dwelling dwarf.
For my friends who’ve not registered, lately I’ve been giving picture frames. As long as you know their tastes, that’s always appreciated and every time they look at it they’ll remember you.
hangs head in shame
makes mental note to replace avacado green pot holders tomorrow
Maybe I’m old-fashioned, but I ALWAYS give silver as a wedding gift. It’s something you never buy for yourself, but it’s really nice to have when you entertain. I make it a point not to buy off registries; I want to select a gift I want to give, not just be one more checkmark off a registry. You can often also find much nicer silver pieces at estate sales that are still truly lovely, too.
Last time I gave silver as a wedding gift, it was from an estate sale and cost me $20, yet was the single favorite gift of the bride and groom. You could always do a silver picture frame, too!
Something I came across this morning… It seemed appropriate for this thread.
The rule of thumb for wedding gifts is the same as for any other gift: give something you think the recipient will enjoy and that you can afford. A lot of times the best gifts are the little cheapy things that show a lot of love and thought.
When my brother got married last summer, he forbade us to get them a gift. We’d just bought a house and moved interstate, and I didn’t have a job yet, so he didn’t want me to spend any money on them. They’d just moved and were excited about having a real yard for the first time, so I made them a wedding garden.
I found a site with listings of various flower meanings, and collected seeds and cuttings of ones with wedding/romance meanings. Ivy, morning glory, daisies (my SIL loves daisies), that sort of thing. I packaged them in little terra cotta pots tied up with tulle and ribbon, made a little booklet on the meanings and care instructions for each plant, and packed it into a basket with a planting trowel. The total cost for plants, pots, basket, trowel, and tulle was about $12. The impression it made was priceless.
FairyChatMom :o That’s as bad as some of the stuff on www.ettiquettehell.com! What were they planning on doing? Telling these people that they owe extra money if they plan to attend the wedding. Why not just set up an admission booth in the Narthex of the church! :rolleyes:
CrazyCatLady what a great idea that was. Now that’s a gift given from the heart.
Tripler if they don’t have a gravy boat get em one. He’s a guy, he wants gravy. She wants something to serve gravy in (and probably wants gravy too). Heck, everybody wants gravy. It’s never about the main course, it’s all about the gravy.
-swampbear
a meal without grave is like a… well, it’s just not right!
Feh. Simpler is better. Everybody’s going to get’em all sorts of fancy crap. I humbly suggest you get them what they really want.
I was in a pal’s wedding right after my own. My wife and I were on our own honeymoon and didn’t even remember to get them gifts until we got to where they were doing theirs.
Well, we chatted with them for a while and later that evening we realized we didn’t have gifts. We jumped in the car, went to a local Walmart and walked around for a few minutes.
I knew my pal was a fiend for Cool Aid, so I grabbed a handfull of packets, we snatched up a couple useful kitchen utensils, and we had overheard them say they lacked a garbage can for their kitchen. So we got’em one of those too.
We dumped all the little stuff in the trash can and wrapped it up a the daily newspaper, and there the ugly thing sat at the wedding reception.
When they got back from their own honeymoon down in Mehico, they gave us a call to thank us for getting them stuff they would actually use on a daily basis.
Well, that’s my experience anyway.
swampbear, thanks to you, I now have that skit from The Man Show in my head: Jimmy Kimmel running around a mall food court with a 5-gallon bucket of gravy and a ladle pouring gravy on everything in sight.
I’m still pondering my options, though. . . I’m particularly wondering what they will do with the basement once I move out of it. Maybe there’s something I can get for them for that. . .
Tripler
Them wheels in my head are a-turnin’.
We went to a wedding of a college friend of my husband’s and we got stuff from the couple’s registry (stuff like baking dishes and towels that they’d asked for). They were so appreciative that we’d bought stuff they really needed, because so many people bought them things they just simply could not use. My thought is, if someone is asking for Pyrex bowels and bathroom towels, they actually need them.
I have to disagree slightly with butrscotch on the idea of buying the couple silver, however. That should depend on what kind of people they are. I grew up in a trailer house. My father worked blue collar and mill jobs all his life, and my mother graduated college at 35 and became a school teacher. My husband’s father worked as a telephone company repairman (now a truckdriver) and his mother is a secretary for a plywood mill president. We both grew up in very down-to-earth families, and any kind of fancy dishes, silverware, etc. would’ve been positively useless.
Something similar to what CrazyCatLady and Gorgon Heap did that I did when my sister graduated high school was to buy her a set of cheap Coca-Cola dishes (she was going to live in a dorm, after all), with matching glasses and silverware, along with a bottle of detergent, sponges, dishrags and drying towels. I put all of it in a footlocker that I got from our parents at my graduation and that I was planning to give her since I was married and didn’t need it.
I’m such an incredibly practical person that everything I buy or want has to have use as more than a dust collector. Gift “baskets” are my favorite gifts. A couple of DVDs, a bag of microwave popcorn and a six-pack of diet Pepsi would be a wonderful gift, in my opinion.
Bowls. BOWLS! Pyrex BOWLS.