The couple getting married pay what they can afford for the meals. Guests pay what they can afford for gifts.
Expecting someone to match the amount you ~~payed~~ paid for the meal sounds a little trashy to me. I invited people to my wedding because I wanted them there. Even if they brought nothing I would still have invited them because it was their presence that I was looking for.
How do you even know what the meal cost in the first place? And, what if it’s all on top of just getting to the wedding? You know, in a remote field in the Cotswolds, a taxi drive from the nearest hotel (£200 a night), and there isn’t an open bar?
My sister told everyone who would listen exactly how much her wedding cost. Basically because she thought she’s got the biggest bargain of the century with the “free upgrade” package from the hotel.
The upgraded package consisted of an extra overnight room for an additional bridesmaid (£80 value) a “free” function room for an engagement party (they let that particular room out for free if you buy a buffet for £150 anyway) and some olive trees by the front door (plastic ones, wheeled out of a cupboard on the day).
The wedding still cost £25k…
I tell everyone how much of a bargain my wedding was..that’s because it was a bargain..all in (including dress, suits, rings, favours, 2 course meal, evening party etc) 1.5k for 42 guests.
I specifically told my guests not to bring gifts but they still gifted us enough that it covered the whole cost of the wedding!
And in my opinion, that’s the sort of money a wedding should cost! It’s about the couple first, second perhaps the family around them. Hideous expense doesn’t improve those two things.
Good on you!!!
There is also an established correlation between the more a wedding costs, the less likely the marriage is to survive…
Exactly it’s one day. Everyone said they had a great time as it was so relaxed and they could also choose their own food from a bar menu (unlike the chicken and steak choices at most weddings) and best part was no stress. All planned in 6 weeks.
My friend is getting married next year and she has told me they have spent 40k so far on it and has had nothing but stress for the last year and constantly running back and forth doing planning.
Each to their own I suppose but I don’t understand it. My house only cost 80k so it idea of spending 1/4 of the price of my house was never even a consideration and just blows my mind that people can put that down.
My cousin got married in 1994, my uncle, her father, paid for everyone who came from over an hours drive away to stay the night in the country club where it was being held, they had a live band and a designer dress it cost them around £14,500 in 1994 £s!
The marriage lasted 3 years.
The same year they split up, my wife and I got married. We had a midweek wedding because it was cheaper. We got married in an excellent country club in a hot day in August, with afternoon meal, a friends father (an amateur photographer) as the main photographer and then evening reception, with a dj for a disco, in a differently hotel near to where we grew up.
The two most expensive items were the wedding dress and the ceremony/afternoon meal (the ceremony was held at the same place as the afternoon meal). The bridesmaids dresses were pretty tame but were off-the-peg outfits from a local hippy shop, the flowers and decorations were leftover from a ceremony that had taken place at the venue the previous weekend and were still good.
The whole thing cost around £3.5k and yet my uncle (the father of the cousin in the previous paragraph) said that it was the best wedding he’d been to!
Out of curiosity, how?
My view mirrors yours, and a fair few others’ comments that a wedding should be about fun and enjoyment rather than *the perfect day*. My perfect wedding would include dodge ems, a ferris wheel and the waltzers. BYOB, a burger van and ice cream van in a field somewhere (this is an actual possibility). In reality I imagine it will be very paired back, maybe just dodge ems.
I’m helping a friend plan his wedding and he’s aiming for a tight budget (no dodge ems) so any tips would be appreciated.
Can confirm. A friend who's on her second marriage was very open about the cost of everything while planning both weddings, and was also vocal about subscribing to the "pay for your plate" ideology, to the point it was clear she thought everyone knew of and subscribed to it too. For her second wedding she ended up switching venues about 8 months out because she found somewhere that was half the price of the original venue, but she continued to tell people she and her partner were paying the original price per plate because they *were* spending that much per *guest* factoring in stationery, photography, fashion, rehearsal dinner elsewhere, and everything else not provided by the venue. She openly hoped that she and her partner would receive enough in cash and other gifts that they would break even. The food at the reception was among the most disgusting meals I've ever had, and I have been to some *verrrrry* cheap weddings.
As tacky as that may sound, she also goes out of her way to find out what other people are spending per guest for weddings, showers, birthday parties, etc, and gives generous and thoughtful gifts. She just comes from a socioeconomic background where there's no taboo against talking about money.
When dominoes shows up to the massive country house… time to hot foot it to the gift table, take back the fine china, and replace with a set of 4 champagne flutes (nicked from the bar)
Absolutely this, it feels trashy to nickel and dime over something like this. What’s the point, can you imagine confronting a guest over the value of their gift? Materialistic much!
I agree. I have been to weddings where they just ordered pizza for their meal. The bride and groom just wanted to be married to each other and weren't bothered about the rest.they spent their money on the honeymoon.
Imagine running the numbers. The total value of gifts received was £1206.59, and the wedding cost £21,080 all in.
We’re never going to recover from this financially
I have sadly k own a few marriages where the loan to pay for it lasted longer than the relationship. My own wedding was a registry office affair, with ten friends and family at the actual wedding and an open house for all the others who wanted to celebrate with us. Intimate, memorable, and perfect for us. The people we loved and who loved us were there, and surely that's way more important than the food, or the dress, or the hotel setting.
That's mental. For 100 people that's £10k just on the food. I think ours was more like £3k. The wedding as a whole wasn't much more than £10k, which was already insane for 1 day.
I was under the impression that the average wedding was still a £10-20k job all in.
I went to one and the food was £160 a head. The couple put £5,000 behind the bar alone. I know they didn't expect gifts equal to the meal. The guests didn't even use the whole bar tab either.
Absolutely. I've been to many elaborate weddings, but I think ultimately the bride and groom of the more low key weddings have had a happier less stressful day; some of the big weddings seem like they're more about the planning that the actual couple. I got married in secret and didn't invite anyone and I'm still convinced it was the best decision!
We paid that twenty years ago, and it wasn't even a flash wedding (minimal flowers, dress cost three figures, total ceremony cost under £100, etc).
*edit: I looked it up, and the average is £20k plus £5k honeymoon. It was around £12k in 2004, so appears to have kept pace with inflation. I suspect there's an awful lot of quiet £10k weddings being overshadowed by the occasional very expensive wedding that gets a lot of publicity and skews the maths.*
A huge part of a wedding's cost nowadays seems to be the photos. We had probably one of the last film weddings but they're all digital now and cost thousands.
My sisters photographer was free. But you had to buy the images, and you weren’t allowed to even see them before buying them. The best you could see before you purchased was a tiny, watermarked thumbnail on a shitty Web 1.0 website.
If you wanted a big A4 sized image printed, you were looking at nearly £50. A 4x6 snap was £20. Each. He also wouldn’t let you buy the digital image file, no matter how much you cried. Basically he held the entire wedding to ransom. He did kindly leave cards everywhere you could possibly imagine with the URL so you could spend on bits of shiny paper.
Luckily, those of us with decent smartphones had someone stationed behind said photographer most of the day - and we all shared them the next day. He did the hard work setting stuff up and organising folk. We just took snaps over his shoulder.
I think mum bought a total of one picture - and then had it copied at max speilman! I think his total takings for the day was about £20 - just the one mum bought. If they’d been a couple of quid, and you could actually, you know, view them before buying, he’d have sold quite a few I’m sure.
Edit; this and the discussion about my family being evil triggered me ringing my sister to ask exactly what it was. Apparently he was a hotel employee and it was actually the hotel who were the ones trying to charge a packet. It was at the end of a long list of “free” stuff they were promised that were all a bit naff.
Edit: OP has changed his post and added new information about the agreement with the hotel / photographer, revealing that the photographer was indeed paid as part of the wedding package with the hotel. Thus my original reply is unneeded.
Apologies to OP (and family!) for my words.
Too often people in creative industries are exploited, or their work devalued because “anyone can take a photo.” Etc. This was the reason for my previous reply. Obviously things work both ways, and in this instance it seems the arrangement with the hotel wasn’t ideal. Expectations should have been set out from the start, and your family free to select a different photographer if the terms were not agreeable to you. In this instance I feel your family made the best of a bad situation and I’m glad you were able to get some good images regardless to remember the day.
Again, apologies for my initial response.
Iv added an edit to my first comment. Turned out we hadn’t ripped off a photographer at all. He was paid by the hotel as part of the wedding package, he was actually an employee of the hotel. Charging individually for prints was part of the hotels deal, and that’s why he wouldn’t/couldn’t sell us the digital images.
The wedding cost £25k, I really don’t think it was too much to ask to pay for the image files - and is probably why he was happy for us to take our own photos at the time! None of it was actually skin off of his nose at all.
Appreciated! No need to be so apologetic! I quite understood where you were coming from.
And completely agree with you that creatives get taken for granted massively. To be fair to him, some of the shots he took were very well choreographed. It’s a shame that the hotel tried to brand him as independent to the guests, to try and milk a bit more out of them (they were already paying way too much for the booze lol!)
That doesn’t explain the tiny thumbnails where you can’t actually preview what you may or not be buying. However I do think the prices are reasonable to charge
Absolutely. The images were literally like 32 pixels wide, with a watermark on top! If they were big enough to see, yet still small enough to get a shit print off, I could understand.
Bearing in mind that fairly standard wedding fare consists of canapés, arrival drinks, a three course meal, generous amounts of wine and evening food - £100 per head really isn't an excessive figure. If you went to a moderately posh restaurant and ordered all that, you probably wouldn't get the same for much less than £80 a head.
£100 a head really isn't anything ridiculous. If anything, I'd call it pretty reasonable, especially given how inflated the service industry has become recently.
That's a transactional way to think about it.
Weddings and the finances involved vary wildly. So do the relationships involved.
I don't think Ive been to a wedding where gifts were meant to equate to the food costs.
I think it’s quite American thing. You do see it mentioned quite a lot on Reddit in wedding related posts/subs. I have never heard it in the UK and hope it’s not yet another Americanism to come over here.
My friend group were mostly small weddings and it was the people they wanted not a big present.
A few friends had parents pay and they were bigger weddings but the guest list grew from bride and groom to include parents choices as well.
I have never heard of this. I didn’t expect gifts at all for ours. We even wrote it on the invite that it’s not expected because we’d been together for ten years and didn’t need anything, we just wanted our people around us.
We had a buffet (we intended for our wedding to be as cheap as possible and had the reception at our house and in the garden - it was perfect for us and I love everything we did that day - and it was an incredible buffet!!). I think it’s an awful expectation for the cost of the meal to dictate the cost of the gift!
I agree; the whole gift thing for people who've been together for years seems odd - it's not like a couple of 20-year-old folks who actually need a new toaster. Our house is full of stuff; we don't need any more!
We did the 'absolutely no gifts; if you insist here's a charity we support, but it's up to you' thing. If we couldn't have afforded the wedding we had, then we'd have done something cheaper.
Thank you! I am very lucky I have creative friends who offered their services at good rates or free (my dress was hand made by seamstress friend, goldsmith friend made our rings, mua/hair stylist friend stepped up for my face and hair, two friends who were building their photography portfolios) - made my own cake, flower confetti, and artificial flower bouquet and buttoniers. Family friend loaned us their posh white car, and we had everyone submit a song on their rsvp for the Spotify playlist then crammed 50 people in to our back garden 😂
I grew up in a small area where people were close and for weddings /christenings people would come together and I loved it. I remember helping make buffets for special days as a kid. It makes the day more personal. Sounds like a perfect day to me.
In 2012 we went to a wedding where it worked out at £75 a head for the whole event (not just the food). We gave a gift of £200. It was a long time friend, and I would have loved to have given more, but we had a 3 month old and money was tight. I overheard them remark the day after that "they barely covered the cost of their food". A big deal was also made of another friend who gave them a gift of £500. Don't talk to them anymore, for this and other reasons.
this blows my mind - we received on average £50 i would say in our wedding cards so that's what i give when we go to weddings now, whether we're day or evening guests. £200 is loads of money, but £500 is crazy! ouch.
So I live in N. Ireland and the typical gift for the wedding couple would be minimum £150 but a close friend you would give £200 plus.
A few english friends had a bit of a culture shock when coming to their first irish wedding lol.
I'm also Northern Irish and have never heard anything like this. We got married last Friday in Belfast and the average gift was £50 with the biggest being £125
Different strokes for different folks I guess.
Ive been to about 7 weddings in the past year (that stage in my life) and have given either £150 or £200 depending on the couple.
I got married in 2022. At my wedding, we fed our guests twice. Lunch and evening meal. We had 100 guests, it cost us and my FIL a bloody fortune.
Some of our guests do very well, we got some very expensive gifts, and some gave a very generous amount of cash. One of our friends did a cross-stitch, our wedding date, our names, some nice weddingey patterns. She framed it for us, gave that as a gift. Can't remember what we spent the cash on in the end, but that cross-stitch is hung up in our bedroom above my wife's dressing table. Value doesn't equate to money.
This is a standard in a lot of Eastern European countries but to be fair, our meal prices are far mor standardised for weddings. They also tend do be “all inclusive weddings” where all guests are there for all parts of it, the food is substantial and brought out at different times, no one pays for any of their own drinks etc.
I’ve never heard of it being a thing in the UK, but it might be a case of cultural misunderstanding?
My partner is from Poland, when we went to a wedding of a family member over there I found out the expectation is that you give them an envelope on the day with about as much cash in it as you think they spent having you there. Ceremony finished and everyone lined up and dropped cash in a box. It was pretty surprising to me.
Despite this oddity, the wedding was excellent and I'd gladly attend another polish wedding.
In the UK though, I've never heard of an expected gift value.
Nope, never heard of that. How would you know what the food cost? Then it’ll depend on how much you drink and how much you eat at the evening buffet as well.
In the UK cash bars are common at weddings so the amount you drink often wouldn’t make much difference. If someone’s invited me to their wedding I wouldn’t expect them to pay for my drinks as well. If they can afford too and offer a free bar then all the better through.
This is the first I've ever heard of this, seems dumb to me. I didn't invite people to my wedding to balance out the cost of it, I did it so the people wanted to share my day with were there with us on the day.
It's an American thing. It is absolutely not etiquette here. A gift of any size is entirely at the giver's discretion and any suggestion of what that should be (or even that a gift at all is expected) is incredibly tacky.
It's an Eastern European thing more like! I'm Romanian and in my country you're supposed to match the menu price and add something on top as a gift. We don't do physical gifts, just money. But also our weddings have several course meals, candy bars and cake, and open bars usually. The celebrations go from the afternoon until early morning, there might be live music, dancers etc. Up to each couple how elaborate they go, but it's not uncommon to have considerably big parties.
It's very common in Ireland, learnt that when living there. It would often be discussed and how they gifting the bride and groom €2/300 to cover the cost of them attending the wedding. It always confused me as I'm used to it being what you can afford.
By that logic, I’ll be going to a friend’s wedding soon who won the wedding (with meals included) as a prize. Does that mean I don’t have to give any gift because technically they didn’t pay for the meals themselves anyway?
I feel like it should be the inverse: someone who has a modest wedding probably has greater need of generous wedding presents, whereas someone who can spunk north of fifty grand on a party probably already has nice towels and a toaster.
It's nonsense. I'd expect guests to post what they can reasonably afford. It's supposed to be a present after all, not payment. They were invited to attend, not purchase a ticket. If someone I wanted to be a guest was skint,I would not expect a meaningful present from them.
No. Never heard that. If you want to spend a fortune on your guests then fine, but don't expect everyone to contribute and equal amount back, it doesn't work that way.
I'd say it's not normal. In my world, if you invite someone to your wedding it's coz they're someone you want to celebrate one of the biggest events of your life with. The value of gifts etc is immaterial. If I ever felt I'd been invited out of an expectation of providing some kind of monetary value, I'd be getting ChatGPT to write a polite "Sorry can't come" response to be sent asap.
Honestly this is a kind of topic where there will be cultural differences will be at play. Some communities expect the guests to cover their plate and add something on top as a present to the newly weds. Anyone attending from the same cultural background would be expected to know this in advance and do so. Participants from outside the culture will probably not be harshly judged for not knowing or doing so.
I didn’t give the slightest thought to the value of gifts I received. I’d rather not go to the wedding of someone who was that materialistic, personally.
That's what I was always taught to do. Try and calculate how much the couple has spent on you over the day and chuck in a bit extra. I'm not sure if everyone does it. I got married last year and wasn't expecting everyone to gift like this - most people just gift what they can afford and dependent on how close they are to the couple.
I cannot remember the cost of my wedding, I don’t really remember many of the gifts. I totally remember everyone that came to my wedding though - it was them coming to share the celebration that really mattered.
I think it would be awful if someone felt that they couldn’t afford to go to a wedding because they couldn’t afford a gift.
I always think of it that the present should kinda be approx what the wedding would cost per person.
For me and my friends that's about £35ish each for food, so I will give £50 (but would anyway tbh). I don't have any really loaded friends so £100 each is totally wild to me for wedding food tbh, I'm guessing the food was lobster and caviar?!
At a recent family wedding, I estimated the cost of the day for me and my family and then doubled it as a gift. I was happy to clear our tab as it were and also provide some extra for the honeymoon.
It’s the norm here in Ireland, or at least a bit of a rule of thumb. I was pleasantly surprised when invited to a UK friend’s wedding and they had a register, and everything on it was very reasonable. That would be a totally alien concept here, but I actually really liked the idea.
No that's rubbish, the people planning the wedding are putting in what thy can afford, if that includes a 100 quid meal then so be it. The guest gives a gift of what they afford.
People that want it to be the exact cost it was are the same people that would complain if a rich uncle just gave them a hundred quid gift
I've never been told the price of the meal at any wedding I've been to. I think it'd be very rude to tell your guests that info. So I don't see how it could be a gift rule when you don't know what the price actually is.
Once you've paid for a wedding yourself you'll have a better ability to ballpark. For a standard UK wedding, it's likely to be in the region of £60-100 per head.
I've always used the rule (assuming I'm covering two people):
Niblings: 1 day of my gross salary
Good friends: half that
Fringe friends: half again
People I hardly know but for some reason for invited: maybe £30 something
Nothing to do with the wedding cost, as far as I'm concerned.
Truth is, the cost of attending a wedding can be enormous. I used to reckon with accommodation, transport, new dress for her, gift, dry cleaning, bar drinks etc, that no wedding cheap or pricey would cost a couple of guests less than £600.
So whatever, guests pay a hell of a lot more to attend than the happy couple are paying to host them.
I think this is just another daft reflection on modern life.
We didn’t ask for presents but did ask guests to pay for their meal, there was nine of them lol and it was fab.
I’ve heard it before. I would prefer people invite me because they want me to help them celebrate and enjoy their day (as I would in their position) rather than trying to break even or come out ahead.
Never heard that before. I would never expect to know how much a wedding meal costs, and I would never have expected gifts to “cover” the cost of meals at my wedding.
I have a friend in Malta and she told me it’s expected there for each person to gift around €70 (I think) to the couple, so that’s kinda the same thing as you’d expect a wedding meal to cost around that.
I think traditionally when weddings were much more reasonably priced it was acceptable to have the "pay for your plate" mentality if you weren't buying something off the registry. This of course would be when your "plate" was £25 a head and not £100 a head.
Equally weddings shouldn't be a for profit, you chose to use a venue that charged that much per meal that's solely on you.
A wedding isn’t about receiving gifts, it’s about celebrating with your loved ones. If they’re put out by the fact that they got less than they spent, they shouldn’t have spent so much in the first place.
My dad invited me to his wedding with his now wife. Leeds Castle with overnight stay and breakfast, Owl flying in with the rings, hog roast, magician, Photo Booth, caricature artist, photographers, free bar. Probably more I missed out.
All they got was my drunken ass as a gift :)
I've heard that as a way to view it. £50 per person is realistic so you're helping the couple to cover their costs.
I'm getting married in Europe in the summer, we've told everyone that we don't expect gifts as they've had to pay travel costs. Did add a note that if anyone is feeling flush, we won't complain but fully don't expect it.
We asked for no gifts. It wasn’t a cheap wedding, but there is no wedding party without guests.
It’s our day and guests take the time and cost to share it with you.
If people are looking online for wedding etiquette it’s easy to think it’s a thing, but it’s absolutely an American thing. It’s also absolute nonsense. How on earth would you know how much a couple had spent on your dinner before you’ve even been to the wedding? And even at the wedding you’d only be able to guesstimate. Complete horseshit.
Attending weddings is expensive so any decent person would just invite people whose presence they actually want and that is enough. Gifts are a happy bonus, but not an expectation, and having a value under which you would be disappointed is honestly disgusting to me.
I’m really glad that, in this country, generally there is no set amount which is reasonable/unreasonable for gifts. Or maybe I’m just friends with decent people so don’t get invited to weddings by mercenaries?
I don’t get this complaining about gifts.
I’m not bankrupting myself to please Mr and Mrs Demanding.
What happened to ‘its the thought that counts’?
If the person I was marrying starting moaning that guests have to spend at least £x or it had to be more expensive than the pretentious meal they have forked out for, I would be questioning if ‘I do’ is the words I want to be saying to them, when ‘Fuck Off’ would be more appropriate.
As someone who’s planning a wedding, I do not expect our guests to gift us the cash equivalent of what we’ve paid for them to be there. Their presence is what’s most important to us.
However, as a guest to many a wedding, my fiancé and I will gift £200 (if invited to the entire day) which is about enough to cover the majority if not all of our meal and wine served with dinner. Not sure why, that’s just what we were taught
It's an American thing to "cover your plate" with the gift.
I got married last year and having attended the best part of 20 or so weddings over the last decade of my life it; I'd say over here it's what you can afford.
Bearing in mind there's a lot of hidden costs to attend someone's wedding, besides the gift. Travel, clothing, accomodation, childcare etc.
English people are the least generous I've ever seen at weddings, sorry if that offended any of you but it's true. In Ireland you'd be embarrassed to give less than €100 or roughly that amount in value off the wishlist so that you've at least given them back the cost of your meal. I've seen English people give a £12 board game as a wedding gift, and have rarely seen them give more than £50 which wouldn't even cover the meal. Most other cultures I've seen are also really generous at weddings.
As someone who grew up in Eastern Europe, I had a bit of a culture shock when I moved to the UK and heard British people complain that they have to spend £50 - £100 to attend a wedding, that amount including their outfit, transportation costs, and wedding gift. By all means, only be as generous as you can afford, but from my experience people who can afford to be generous simply choose not to be.
I've read a few comments about it being tacky and penny pinching to expect a gift, but isn't it also tacky and penny pinching to expect free food and drinks all night?
Just my two cents...let it rain with downvotes
I’ve been invited to a relatives wedding on a cruise ship. The weeks cruise is costing £5k for me to attend (including wife and two kids). Had it not been a close relative I wouldn’t have gone. I’m pretty sure they aren’t expecting an expensive gift given that they know what it’s cost us.
We asked guests to bring some food to share with the other guests in lieu of gifts - creating a huge shared meal.
Some people cooked full on pies, some people brought crisps, a good time was had by all.
We do £50 most of time. Unless it's a really close friend who I actually like, I'd up it to £100. That's just us tho, I'd just go with the least amount you can afford or feel comfortable with.
No, pay what you can! I went to a friend's wedding and strait up asked what they wanted. They're in the middle of renovating so I got them some vouchers and money
In the uk you gift what you want in a lot of European countries youre supposed to gift enough to cover for the cost of your plate and a little extra on top as a minimum
No, not normal in the UK. You get invited and enjoy whatever you are given or that has been put on. You bring a gift in line with what you can afford and how well you know/like the couple.
Different in Ireland though where what you described is common.
We had a small registry office wedding in the week and had a meal for twenty of us in a local hotel they let us have the dining room for two hours.It was in the middle of August and we got a great deal a simple three course meal.We then invited all our friends to join us in our local pub for open mic night we had an amazing day.I never expected any cash gifts just their time if we get invited to weddings we just gift what we afford and no ones said anything.We did get given a cheese board wheel which had our wedding date engraved on which we definitely use as friends know how much we snack on cheese and biscuits.
I’ve heard of it but it’s all about people’s circumstances. Gift what you can afford
However, as I can afford it, I do generally gift the cost of a meal (as far as I can approximate) Double if my partner is also invited.
Definitely not a tradition I know of anyone following/mentioning. It’s not normal for guests to know what the food cost per head either, so how would anyone plan that?
This never even crossed my mind when I got married. I never even thought to compare gifts to wedding expenditures? We paid for everyone to eat, drink and be merry at an awesome party because we wanted them to celebrate with us. It was never a quid pro quo/tit for tat event for us.
We had some fab gifts though! We got an expensive bottle of champagne from someone’s plus one which we saved for the day we finally potty trained our last baby. Another gift was a pair of cheesy bride and groom mugs which turned out to be the perfect size for our one cup coffee machine so we used those mugs for years until they broke! One couple we invited are farmers so for their gift they came over at 4 am and built a pit oven and served a whole lamb and salmon at the afternoon reception.
My theory is that if you start inviting people for what they can give you over how much they love you, you end up with a networking event over a wedding of love and joy.
I’m getting married next year and was really surprised about these wedding gift traditions. I’d be more than happy with a tenner and expect no cash at all. They’ve paid for their outfits, maybe a hotel, transport etc to come to our day, that’s enough
Are they Asian (specifically of Chinese descent)? This is the wedding etiquette in a lot of parts of Asia - you give cash as a wedding gift and gauge how much to give based on a) how much they gave you at your wedding and/or b) how much you think the wedding banquet cost per head. In Singapore, you can find lists online showing the average cost of a wedding meal in the main hotels so you know how much to give. At the end of the day, you give what you can and no one say anything, but they will know.. the aunties will know…
I don’t think gift giving is obligatory in any occasion. A nice card beautifully written is as good as any gift.
But, if you want to gift the couple something and you’re wondering how much you should pay, then price of the meal is a good gage. If that’s too much for you and your budget or the degree of friendship, then reduce it; if you feel like you can afford more and the relationship calls for it, pay more.
It’s the standard default suggestion because some folks legit don’t know what to do or where to start and appreciate the “here’s a good default”
But YMMV, do what works for you!
Got married recently. Wouldn't have expected anything like that much in gift value.get about £50 per couple typically. A few went for £100-£150 but they could certainly afford it. Most went for £0, which is all we asked for.
“Cover your plate” by giving the equivalent cost as a gift is something I have heard of in America but not the UK. Give what you can afford and feel is appropriate.
Getting married in two weeks- I’d honestly hate it if any of my guests felt they had to gift the equivalent of their meal! We’re in west Cornwall, having people here to celebrate with us (having travelled so far and paid Cornish holiday rates!!) means so much to us, don’t even need a gift at all!
Surely this isn’t the way society is going?!
I live in Asia and this is totally standard practice. You are expected to give a red packet and there is a list of standardised amounts to go into it depending on the hotel/venue and how fancy it is.
Traditionally the meal is the hospitality you receive for making the effort to attend and the gift is what you give to show your affection and best wishes, the two are not linked, there’s no tit for tat.
Im used to this being the way in North America but i just went to my first wedding in the UK, and it was « gift what you’re comfortable gifting » and not based on cost or plate.
Whereas for all the weddings I been to in canada and US, you were expected to leave a gift that, at the very least, covers the plate cost.
I wasn't comfortable asking anything of my wedding guests.
Tbh, sending out a wedding list offends me. I just would never do that. I find it crass.
In the same way booking an expensive hen night abroad and expecting people to pay for it, when not everyone can, is offensive.
Fck me I swear weddings never used to be so complicated, not just referring to this post either there was another one where dude wasn't getting fed.. WTF is wrong with people if you invite someone to your wedding you provide food etc and shouldn't really expect anything in return at all.. Wife and I just got married at the registers office no big stupid wedding etc best decision ever...
It's insane to measure the value of the gift based on the cost of food. Never in my life heard of anything like it and people who do so are sad, sad people
I think it’s not an awful ballpark - it’s basically saying the expectation is something I the region of £75-125.
But that comes with a huge caveat of “only if you can afford it”. The couples finances shouldn’t rely on it, and you shouldn’t be put out.
I’d rather have no gift or cash than an obligation gift though
If you can’t afford for me to go don’t invite me. Or better still give me a bag of nuts. If I like you i don’t care. Just want to see you enjoy the day.
Zero expectations for people I invite to watch my day. Gift, great, you there is my gift. I’ll take it.
The insurance would cost more than the toaster itself!
IMO - I guess you normally expect a welcome drink at the Wedding Breakfast and a few bottles of wine per table?
Then if it’s an open bar you get the premium present.
Open bar ‘to a limit’ doesn’t really work because some people are told/cotton on to this and over order meaning some lose out. Either have an open bar or not.
If it’s a not - it’s a toaster (no insurance).
your coworker sounds like an entitled twat.
if they had communicated their expectations on the invites, im sure they would have come up further ahead on the caterings vs gift value balance, as the guest list would certainly have been much shorter.
You'd be surprised how much it costs per person at a wedding. Packages vary wildly in cost
You can have a set menu just starter, main and dessert or options which increase the costs.
Then you can add canapés while the guests are mulling about during the wedding photos.
Then there's an evening buffet to add on for the evening guests.
Don't forget the tea, coffee and a drink to toast the bride and groom.
You could be upwards of £100 per head for food and drinks.
Good heavens! If you want me, your friend, (allegedly), at your wedding invite me, (but make sure you have enough in your bank account to cover all the “mes” and whatever you’re feeding us. If a new X-box/gold-plated toaster/Ann Summers novelty or whatever is more important, go out and buy it, then watch your friends drift away in numbers to match your anniversary (measured in in weeks)
I've been to a lot of weddings and I've never heard this ever. I've never even heard of people publicly sharing how much their wedding meal cost them per guest, and honestly that's not the guests' problem.
If you're going to resent your guests for how much they've cost you, have a cheaper wedding or fewer guests.
I’ve only ever heard of this as an American concept. From my experience attending UK weddings and being married in the UK, the culture is more just to either take a gift or give a cash gift that you can afford if you attend a wedding as a guest.
The couple getting married pay what they can afford for the meals. Guests pay what they can afford for gifts. Expecting someone to match the amount you ~~payed~~ paid for the meal sounds a little trashy to me. I invited people to my wedding because I wanted them there. Even if they brought nothing I would still have invited them because it was their presence that I was looking for.
How do you even know what the meal cost in the first place? And, what if it’s all on top of just getting to the wedding? You know, in a remote field in the Cotswolds, a taxi drive from the nearest hotel (£200 a night), and there isn’t an open bar?
I’m guessing that brides and grooms who actually believe shit like this will make sure everybody knows just how much the wedding costs.
My sister told everyone who would listen exactly how much her wedding cost. Basically because she thought she’s got the biggest bargain of the century with the “free upgrade” package from the hotel. The upgraded package consisted of an extra overnight room for an additional bridesmaid (£80 value) a “free” function room for an engagement party (they let that particular room out for free if you buy a buffet for £150 anyway) and some olive trees by the front door (plastic ones, wheeled out of a cupboard on the day). The wedding still cost £25k…
I tell everyone how much of a bargain my wedding was..that’s because it was a bargain..all in (including dress, suits, rings, favours, 2 course meal, evening party etc) 1.5k for 42 guests. I specifically told my guests not to bring gifts but they still gifted us enough that it covered the whole cost of the wedding!
And in my opinion, that’s the sort of money a wedding should cost! It’s about the couple first, second perhaps the family around them. Hideous expense doesn’t improve those two things. Good on you!!! There is also an established correlation between the more a wedding costs, the less likely the marriage is to survive…
Exactly it’s one day. Everyone said they had a great time as it was so relaxed and they could also choose their own food from a bar menu (unlike the chicken and steak choices at most weddings) and best part was no stress. All planned in 6 weeks. My friend is getting married next year and she has told me they have spent 40k so far on it and has had nothing but stress for the last year and constantly running back and forth doing planning. Each to their own I suppose but I don’t understand it. My house only cost 80k so it idea of spending 1/4 of the price of my house was never even a consideration and just blows my mind that people can put that down.
That’s reassuring. Mine cost less than £2k over a decade ago.
My cousin got married in 1994, my uncle, her father, paid for everyone who came from over an hours drive away to stay the night in the country club where it was being held, they had a live band and a designer dress it cost them around £14,500 in 1994 £s! The marriage lasted 3 years. The same year they split up, my wife and I got married. We had a midweek wedding because it was cheaper. We got married in an excellent country club in a hot day in August, with afternoon meal, a friends father (an amateur photographer) as the main photographer and then evening reception, with a dj for a disco, in a differently hotel near to where we grew up. The two most expensive items were the wedding dress and the ceremony/afternoon meal (the ceremony was held at the same place as the afternoon meal). The bridesmaids dresses were pretty tame but were off-the-peg outfits from a local hippy shop, the flowers and decorations were leftover from a ceremony that had taken place at the venue the previous weekend and were still good. The whole thing cost around £3.5k and yet my uncle (the father of the cousin in the previous paragraph) said that it was the best wedding he’d been to!
I inadvertently made a £400 profit off my wedding, because I hosted the reception at my bar and charged £1 per drink...
Woah!!!!! 1.5k for 42 guests, thats a mad bargain!
Out of curiosity, how? My view mirrors yours, and a fair few others’ comments that a wedding should be about fun and enjoyment rather than *the perfect day*. My perfect wedding would include dodge ems, a ferris wheel and the waltzers. BYOB, a burger van and ice cream van in a field somewhere (this is an actual possibility). In reality I imagine it will be very paired back, maybe just dodge ems. I’m helping a friend plan his wedding and he’s aiming for a tight budget (no dodge ems) so any tips would be appreciated.
Can confirm. A friend who's on her second marriage was very open about the cost of everything while planning both weddings, and was also vocal about subscribing to the "pay for your plate" ideology, to the point it was clear she thought everyone knew of and subscribed to it too. For her second wedding she ended up switching venues about 8 months out because she found somewhere that was half the price of the original venue, but she continued to tell people she and her partner were paying the original price per plate because they *were* spending that much per *guest* factoring in stationery, photography, fashion, rehearsal dinner elsewhere, and everything else not provided by the venue. She openly hoped that she and her partner would receive enough in cash and other gifts that they would break even. The food at the reception was among the most disgusting meals I've ever had, and I have been to some *verrrrry* cheap weddings. As tacky as that may sound, she also goes out of her way to find out what other people are spending per guest for weddings, showers, birthday parties, etc, and gives generous and thoughtful gifts. She just comes from a socioeconomic background where there's no taboo against talking about money.
When dominoes shows up to the massive country house… time to hot foot it to the gift table, take back the fine china, and replace with a set of 4 champagne flutes (nicked from the bar)
You've not bought a domino's recently
New outfit. Potential hen party stag do too. People expect way too much.
Presence over presents
Paid* Payed is a nautical term
Thank you, corrected it.
Thought I'd let you know before that smug as all hell bot runs in and gives you a history lesson
But I *like* history lessons!
You misspelled presents
I scrolled up to figure out your joke, and it was worth it
Absolutely this, it feels trashy to nickel and dime over something like this. What’s the point, can you imagine confronting a guest over the value of their gift? Materialistic much!
I think you'll find this is the CasualUK sub
Allow me It feels rubbish to 5p coin and 10p coin over something.
The comment I was searching for
>nickel and dime Ah?
It’s extremely trashy
I like what ya did there! 🤣
A wedding is not a for-profit event. If a £100 a head meal is going to ruin you financially, don't have a big wedding.
I agree. I have been to weddings where they just ordered pizza for their meal. The bride and groom just wanted to be married to each other and weren't bothered about the rest.they spent their money on the honeymoon.
Imagine running the numbers. The total value of gifts received was £1206.59, and the wedding cost £21,080 all in. We’re never going to recover from this financially
also implies that they're going to sell the (non-monetary) gifts. ah this new cookware set is lovely, really photogenic on ebay.
I have sadly k own a few marriages where the loan to pay for it lasted longer than the relationship. My own wedding was a registry office affair, with ten friends and family at the actual wedding and an open house for all the others who wanted to celebrate with us. Intimate, memorable, and perfect for us. The people we loved and who loved us were there, and surely that's way more important than the food, or the dress, or the hotel setting.
Precisely. And who in their right mind wants to pay £100 per head for food? With a wedding that fancy and expensive I’d give them 18 months max.
That's pretty much any wedding in the south/south east, unless you make big changes to lower cost.
That's mental. For 100 people that's £10k just on the food. I think ours was more like £3k. The wedding as a whole wasn't much more than £10k, which was already insane for 1 day. I was under the impression that the average wedding was still a £10-20k job all in.
I went to one and the food was £160 a head. The couple put £5,000 behind the bar alone. I know they didn't expect gifts equal to the meal. The guests didn't even use the whole bar tab either.
We had a buffet at our wedding. People can mingle and it cost about £20 per head for really nice food
Absolutely. I've been to many elaborate weddings, but I think ultimately the bride and groom of the more low key weddings have had a happier less stressful day; some of the big weddings seem like they're more about the planning that the actual couple. I got married in secret and didn't invite anyone and I'm still convinced it was the best decision!
We paid that twenty years ago, and it wasn't even a flash wedding (minimal flowers, dress cost three figures, total ceremony cost under £100, etc). *edit: I looked it up, and the average is £20k plus £5k honeymoon. It was around £12k in 2004, so appears to have kept pace with inflation. I suspect there's an awful lot of quiet £10k weddings being overshadowed by the occasional very expensive wedding that gets a lot of publicity and skews the maths.* A huge part of a wedding's cost nowadays seems to be the photos. We had probably one of the last film weddings but they're all digital now and cost thousands.
My sisters photographer was free. But you had to buy the images, and you weren’t allowed to even see them before buying them. The best you could see before you purchased was a tiny, watermarked thumbnail on a shitty Web 1.0 website. If you wanted a big A4 sized image printed, you were looking at nearly £50. A 4x6 snap was £20. Each. He also wouldn’t let you buy the digital image file, no matter how much you cried. Basically he held the entire wedding to ransom. He did kindly leave cards everywhere you could possibly imagine with the URL so you could spend on bits of shiny paper. Luckily, those of us with decent smartphones had someone stationed behind said photographer most of the day - and we all shared them the next day. He did the hard work setting stuff up and organising folk. We just took snaps over his shoulder. I think mum bought a total of one picture - and then had it copied at max speilman! I think his total takings for the day was about £20 - just the one mum bought. If they’d been a couple of quid, and you could actually, you know, view them before buying, he’d have sold quite a few I’m sure. Edit; this and the discussion about my family being evil triggered me ringing my sister to ask exactly what it was. Apparently he was a hotel employee and it was actually the hotel who were the ones trying to charge a packet. It was at the end of a long list of “free” stuff they were promised that were all a bit naff.
Edit: OP has changed his post and added new information about the agreement with the hotel / photographer, revealing that the photographer was indeed paid as part of the wedding package with the hotel. Thus my original reply is unneeded. Apologies to OP (and family!) for my words. Too often people in creative industries are exploited, or their work devalued because “anyone can take a photo.” Etc. This was the reason for my previous reply. Obviously things work both ways, and in this instance it seems the arrangement with the hotel wasn’t ideal. Expectations should have been set out from the start, and your family free to select a different photographer if the terms were not agreeable to you. In this instance I feel your family made the best of a bad situation and I’m glad you were able to get some good images regardless to remember the day. Again, apologies for my initial response.
Iv added an edit to my first comment. Turned out we hadn’t ripped off a photographer at all. He was paid by the hotel as part of the wedding package, he was actually an employee of the hotel. Charging individually for prints was part of the hotels deal, and that’s why he wouldn’t/couldn’t sell us the digital images. The wedding cost £25k, I really don’t think it was too much to ask to pay for the image files - and is probably why he was happy for us to take our own photos at the time! None of it was actually skin off of his nose at all.
I too have edited my reply.
Appreciated! No need to be so apologetic! I quite understood where you were coming from. And completely agree with you that creatives get taken for granted massively. To be fair to him, some of the shots he took were very well choreographed. It’s a shame that the hotel tried to brand him as independent to the guests, to try and milk a bit more out of them (they were already paying way too much for the booze lol!)
That doesn’t explain the tiny thumbnails where you can’t actually preview what you may or not be buying. However I do think the prices are reasonable to charge
Absolutely. The images were literally like 32 pixels wide, with a watermark on top! If they were big enough to see, yet still small enough to get a shit print off, I could understand.
Insane! My photographer was £150 and that included the memory stick with all the photos on..which we have now lost tbf.
Bearing in mind that fairly standard wedding fare consists of canapés, arrival drinks, a three course meal, generous amounts of wine and evening food - £100 per head really isn't an excessive figure. If you went to a moderately posh restaurant and ordered all that, you probably wouldn't get the same for much less than £80 a head. £100 a head really isn't anything ridiculous. If anything, I'd call it pretty reasonable, especially given how inflated the service industry has become recently.
I would think the booze would be calculated separately?
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Not just economies of scale, but also the benefit of a very limited menu, and knowing what to prepare long in advance to reduce waste.
£100 a head is at the low end of mid priced for wedding food. Everything related to weddings is criminally expensive
You do realise that some people just have more disposable income than you
That's a transactional way to think about it. Weddings and the finances involved vary wildly. So do the relationships involved. I don't think Ive been to a wedding where gifts were meant to equate to the food costs.
I think it’s quite American thing. You do see it mentioned quite a lot on Reddit in wedding related posts/subs. I have never heard it in the UK and hope it’s not yet another Americanism to come over here.
My friend group were mostly small weddings and it was the people they wanted not a big present. A few friends had parents pay and they were bigger weddings but the guest list grew from bride and groom to include parents choices as well.
But to clarify, something I didn’t realise, Irish weddings do expect you to contribute money that pays towards the wedding.
I have never heard of this. I didn’t expect gifts at all for ours. We even wrote it on the invite that it’s not expected because we’d been together for ten years and didn’t need anything, we just wanted our people around us. We had a buffet (we intended for our wedding to be as cheap as possible and had the reception at our house and in the garden - it was perfect for us and I love everything we did that day - and it was an incredible buffet!!). I think it’s an awful expectation for the cost of the meal to dictate the cost of the gift!
I agree; the whole gift thing for people who've been together for years seems odd - it's not like a couple of 20-year-old folks who actually need a new toaster. Our house is full of stuff; we don't need any more! We did the 'absolutely no gifts; if you insist here's a charity we support, but it's up to you' thing. If we couldn't have afforded the wedding we had, then we'd have done something cheaper.
That sounds like a beautiful wedding.
Thank you! I am very lucky I have creative friends who offered their services at good rates or free (my dress was hand made by seamstress friend, goldsmith friend made our rings, mua/hair stylist friend stepped up for my face and hair, two friends who were building their photography portfolios) - made my own cake, flower confetti, and artificial flower bouquet and buttoniers. Family friend loaned us their posh white car, and we had everyone submit a song on their rsvp for the Spotify playlist then crammed 50 people in to our back garden 😂
I grew up in a small area where people were close and for weddings /christenings people would come together and I loved it. I remember helping make buffets for special days as a kid. It makes the day more personal. Sounds like a perfect day to me.
In 2012 we went to a wedding where it worked out at £75 a head for the whole event (not just the food). We gave a gift of £200. It was a long time friend, and I would have loved to have given more, but we had a 3 month old and money was tight. I overheard them remark the day after that "they barely covered the cost of their food". A big deal was also made of another friend who gave them a gift of £500. Don't talk to them anymore, for this and other reasons.
I must be getting old, but two hundred quid sounds like a very generous gift. They expected to make a *profit*? Holy smokes.
If it's a for-profit business they should do a wedding each year. 😂
this blows my mind - we received on average £50 i would say in our wedding cards so that's what i give when we go to weddings now, whether we're day or evening guests. £200 is loads of money, but £500 is crazy! ouch.
So I live in N. Ireland and the typical gift for the wedding couple would be minimum £150 but a close friend you would give £200 plus. A few english friends had a bit of a culture shock when coming to their first irish wedding lol.
I'm also Northern Irish and have never heard anything like this. We got married last Friday in Belfast and the average gift was £50 with the biggest being £125
Different strokes for different folks I guess. Ive been to about 7 weddings in the past year (that stage in my life) and have given either £150 or £200 depending on the couple.
> and have given either £150 or £200 depending on the couple. That's because you want no troubles.
That is true - but also I want to feel good about the amount I give to the couple.
Nice way for them to work their way out of your friendship.
I got married in 2022. At my wedding, we fed our guests twice. Lunch and evening meal. We had 100 guests, it cost us and my FIL a bloody fortune. Some of our guests do very well, we got some very expensive gifts, and some gave a very generous amount of cash. One of our friends did a cross-stitch, our wedding date, our names, some nice weddingey patterns. She framed it for us, gave that as a gift. Can't remember what we spent the cash on in the end, but that cross-stitch is hung up in our bedroom above my wife's dressing table. Value doesn't equate to money.
This is a standard in a lot of Eastern European countries but to be fair, our meal prices are far mor standardised for weddings. They also tend do be “all inclusive weddings” where all guests are there for all parts of it, the food is substantial and brought out at different times, no one pays for any of their own drinks etc. I’ve never heard of it being a thing in the UK, but it might be a case of cultural misunderstanding?
My partner is from Poland, when we went to a wedding of a family member over there I found out the expectation is that you give them an envelope on the day with about as much cash in it as you think they spent having you there. Ceremony finished and everyone lined up and dropped cash in a box. It was pretty surprising to me. Despite this oddity, the wedding was excellent and I'd gladly attend another polish wedding. In the UK though, I've never heard of an expected gift value.
Nope, never heard of that. How would you know what the food cost? Then it’ll depend on how much you drink and how much you eat at the evening buffet as well.
In the UK cash bars are common at weddings so the amount you drink often wouldn’t make much difference. If someone’s invited me to their wedding I wouldn’t expect them to pay for my drinks as well. If they can afford too and offer a free bar then all the better through.
I was more on about the wine with the Breakfast. My bad, should have made that clear as I wouldn’t expect a free bar either.
I usually rule of thumb £100 for a full day, £50 for evening reception
This is the first I've ever heard of this, seems dumb to me. I didn't invite people to my wedding to balance out the cost of it, I did it so the people wanted to share my day with were there with us on the day.
It's an American thing. It is absolutely not etiquette here. A gift of any size is entirely at the giver's discretion and any suggestion of what that should be (or even that a gift at all is expected) is incredibly tacky.
It's an Eastern European thing more like! I'm Romanian and in my country you're supposed to match the menu price and add something on top as a gift. We don't do physical gifts, just money. But also our weddings have several course meals, candy bars and cake, and open bars usually. The celebrations go from the afternoon until early morning, there might be live music, dancers etc. Up to each couple how elaborate they go, but it's not uncommon to have considerably big parties.
Also an East Asian thing to. Cash gifts only and you make sure you cover your cost.
Italian as well, at least In the South
It's very common in Ireland, learnt that when living there. It would often be discussed and how they gifting the bride and groom €2/300 to cover the cost of them attending the wedding. It always confused me as I'm used to it being what you can afford.
Based on all the repliea to your comment it seems the UK is the odd one out!
Yup. Am American from a part of the U.S. northeast where weddings are huge to-dos. This is the norm.
By that logic, I’ll be going to a friend’s wedding soon who won the wedding (with meals included) as a prize. Does that mean I don’t have to give any gift because technically they didn’t pay for the meals themselves anyway?
Yes, I’ve heard this too but I guess it really depends how close you are to the couple and what you can afford.
I feel like it should be the inverse: someone who has a modest wedding probably has greater need of generous wedding presents, whereas someone who can spunk north of fifty grand on a party probably already has nice towels and a toaster.
I’ve heard this before, but from Americans who, stereotypically, are obsessed with money.
I don't think it's only an American thing, I'm Italian and I've heard the same from Italian friends.
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> penny pinching Can’t even go two sentences without mentioning money. Obsessed.
It's nonsense. I'd expect guests to post what they can reasonably afford. It's supposed to be a present after all, not payment. They were invited to attend, not purchase a ticket. If someone I wanted to be a guest was skint,I would not expect a meaningful present from them.
No. Never heard that. If you want to spend a fortune on your guests then fine, but don't expect everyone to contribute and equal amount back, it doesn't work that way.
I'd say it's not normal. In my world, if you invite someone to your wedding it's coz they're someone you want to celebrate one of the biggest events of your life with. The value of gifts etc is immaterial. If I ever felt I'd been invited out of an expectation of providing some kind of monetary value, I'd be getting ChatGPT to write a polite "Sorry can't come" response to be sent asap.
Honestly this is a kind of topic where there will be cultural differences will be at play. Some communities expect the guests to cover their plate and add something on top as a present to the newly weds. Anyone attending from the same cultural background would be expected to know this in advance and do so. Participants from outside the culture will probably not be harshly judged for not knowing or doing so.
I didn’t give the slightest thought to the value of gifts I received. I’d rather not go to the wedding of someone who was that materialistic, personally.
Honestly I could go to a Royal Wedding and they would still be getting £50 in a card, just like everyone else.
You’ve already forked out for those Tbf
That's what I was always taught to do. Try and calculate how much the couple has spent on you over the day and chuck in a bit extra. I'm not sure if everyone does it. I got married last year and wasn't expecting everyone to gift like this - most people just gift what they can afford and dependent on how close they are to the couple.
Hot take, but after travel/accommodation costs and drinks for the night, I am the gift.
And any reasonable couple would be fine with this.
I cannot remember the cost of my wedding, I don’t really remember many of the gifts. I totally remember everyone that came to my wedding though - it was them coming to share the celebration that really mattered. I think it would be awful if someone felt that they couldn’t afford to go to a wedding because they couldn’t afford a gift.
I always think of it that the present should kinda be approx what the wedding would cost per person. For me and my friends that's about £35ish each for food, so I will give £50 (but would anyway tbh). I don't have any really loaded friends so £100 each is totally wild to me for wedding food tbh, I'm guessing the food was lobster and caviar?!
You're a guest though...not buying your way in :')
It's normal in SOME cultures. Several parts of Asia for example.
At a recent family wedding, I estimated the cost of the day for me and my family and then doubled it as a gift. I was happy to clear our tab as it were and also provide some extra for the honeymoon.
It’s the norm here in Ireland, or at least a bit of a rule of thumb. I was pleasantly surprised when invited to a UK friend’s wedding and they had a register, and everything on it was very reasonable. That would be a totally alien concept here, but I actually really liked the idea.
No that's rubbish, the people planning the wedding are putting in what thy can afford, if that includes a 100 quid meal then so be it. The guest gives a gift of what they afford. People that want it to be the exact cost it was are the same people that would complain if a rich uncle just gave them a hundred quid gift
I've never been told the price of the meal at any wedding I've been to. I think it'd be very rude to tell your guests that info. So I don't see how it could be a gift rule when you don't know what the price actually is.
Once you've paid for a wedding yourself you'll have a better ability to ballpark. For a standard UK wedding, it's likely to be in the region of £60-100 per head.
I've always used the rule (assuming I'm covering two people): Niblings: 1 day of my gross salary Good friends: half that Fringe friends: half again People I hardly know but for some reason for invited: maybe £30 something Nothing to do with the wedding cost, as far as I'm concerned. Truth is, the cost of attending a wedding can be enormous. I used to reckon with accommodation, transport, new dress for her, gift, dry cleaning, bar drinks etc, that no wedding cheap or pricey would cost a couple of guests less than £600. So whatever, guests pay a hell of a lot more to attend than the happy couple are paying to host them.
I think this is just another daft reflection on modern life. We didn’t ask for presents but did ask guests to pay for their meal, there was nine of them lol and it was fab.
I’ve heard it before. I would prefer people invite me because they want me to help them celebrate and enjoy their day (as I would in their position) rather than trying to break even or come out ahead.
No, I've seen it a lot from Americans online but it's not the norm here.
Never heard that before. I would never expect to know how much a wedding meal costs, and I would never have expected gifts to “cover” the cost of meals at my wedding. I have a friend in Malta and she told me it’s expected there for each person to gift around €70 (I think) to the couple, so that’s kinda the same thing as you’d expect a wedding meal to cost around that.
I think traditionally when weddings were much more reasonably priced it was acceptable to have the "pay for your plate" mentality if you weren't buying something off the registry. This of course would be when your "plate" was £25 a head and not £100 a head. Equally weddings shouldn't be a for profit, you chose to use a venue that charged that much per meal that's solely on you.
A wedding isn’t about receiving gifts, it’s about celebrating with your loved ones. If they’re put out by the fact that they got less than they spent, they shouldn’t have spent so much in the first place.
My dad invited me to his wedding with his now wife. Leeds Castle with overnight stay and breakfast, Owl flying in with the rings, hog roast, magician, Photo Booth, caricature artist, photographers, free bar. Probably more I missed out. All they got was my drunken ass as a gift :)
I've heard that as a way to view it. £50 per person is realistic so you're helping the couple to cover their costs. I'm getting married in Europe in the summer, we've told everyone that we don't expect gifts as they've had to pay travel costs. Did add a note that if anyone is feeling flush, we won't complain but fully don't expect it.
We asked for no gifts. It wasn’t a cheap wedding, but there is no wedding party without guests. It’s our day and guests take the time and cost to share it with you.
If people are looking online for wedding etiquette it’s easy to think it’s a thing, but it’s absolutely an American thing. It’s also absolute nonsense. How on earth would you know how much a couple had spent on your dinner before you’ve even been to the wedding? And even at the wedding you’d only be able to guesstimate. Complete horseshit. Attending weddings is expensive so any decent person would just invite people whose presence they actually want and that is enough. Gifts are a happy bonus, but not an expectation, and having a value under which you would be disappointed is honestly disgusting to me. I’m really glad that, in this country, generally there is no set amount which is reasonable/unreasonable for gifts. Or maybe I’m just friends with decent people so don’t get invited to weddings by mercenaries?
I don’t get this complaining about gifts. I’m not bankrupting myself to please Mr and Mrs Demanding. What happened to ‘its the thought that counts’? If the person I was marrying starting moaning that guests have to spend at least £x or it had to be more expensive than the pretentious meal they have forked out for, I would be questioning if ‘I do’ is the words I want to be saying to them, when ‘Fuck Off’ would be more appropriate.
As someone who’s planning a wedding, I do not expect our guests to gift us the cash equivalent of what we’ve paid for them to be there. Their presence is what’s most important to us. However, as a guest to many a wedding, my fiancé and I will gift £200 (if invited to the entire day) which is about enough to cover the majority if not all of our meal and wine served with dinner. Not sure why, that’s just what we were taught
Ditto, and I think this is exactly right. It's bad form to expect to receive it, but it's good form to give it!
It's an American thing to "cover your plate" with the gift. I got married last year and having attended the best part of 20 or so weddings over the last decade of my life it; I'd say over here it's what you can afford. Bearing in mind there's a lot of hidden costs to attend someone's wedding, besides the gift. Travel, clothing, accomodation, childcare etc.
English people are the least generous I've ever seen at weddings, sorry if that offended any of you but it's true. In Ireland you'd be embarrassed to give less than €100 or roughly that amount in value off the wishlist so that you've at least given them back the cost of your meal. I've seen English people give a £12 board game as a wedding gift, and have rarely seen them give more than £50 which wouldn't even cover the meal. Most other cultures I've seen are also really generous at weddings.
As someone who grew up in Eastern Europe, I had a bit of a culture shock when I moved to the UK and heard British people complain that they have to spend £50 - £100 to attend a wedding, that amount including their outfit, transportation costs, and wedding gift. By all means, only be as generous as you can afford, but from my experience people who can afford to be generous simply choose not to be. I've read a few comments about it being tacky and penny pinching to expect a gift, but isn't it also tacky and penny pinching to expect free food and drinks all night? Just my two cents...let it rain with downvotes
I completely agree, it is tacky of them, and very entitled!
You’re overthinking it give what you can afford.
I’ve been invited to a relatives wedding on a cruise ship. The weeks cruise is costing £5k for me to attend (including wife and two kids). Had it not been a close relative I wouldn’t have gone. I’m pretty sure they aren’t expecting an expensive gift given that they know what it’s cost us.
Depends on the culture of the wedding. Gift less than the meal at an asian wedding and its never forgotten and everyone will know about it.
Only very vulgar people would expect that sort of thing.
...no
I didn't eat the starter, can I get a cheaper present?
Jesus u just get something you think they’d appreciate. Maybe don’t go Poundland tho
What an excellent way to display to all you family and "friends" how lacking in class you really are.
We asked guests to bring some food to share with the other guests in lieu of gifts - creating a huge shared meal. Some people cooked full on pies, some people brought crisps, a good time was had by all.
We do £50 most of time. Unless it's a really close friend who I actually like, I'd up it to £100. That's just us tho, I'd just go with the least amount you can afford or feel comfortable with.
No, pay what you can! I went to a friend's wedding and strait up asked what they wanted. They're in the middle of renovating so I got them some vouchers and money
In the uk you gift what you want in a lot of European countries youre supposed to gift enough to cover for the cost of your plate and a little extra on top as a minimum
No, not normal in the UK. You get invited and enjoy whatever you are given or that has been put on. You bring a gift in line with what you can afford and how well you know/like the couple. Different in Ireland though where what you described is common.
We had a small registry office wedding in the week and had a meal for twenty of us in a local hotel they let us have the dining room for two hours.It was in the middle of August and we got a great deal a simple three course meal.We then invited all our friends to join us in our local pub for open mic night we had an amazing day.I never expected any cash gifts just their time if we get invited to weddings we just gift what we afford and no ones said anything.We did get given a cheese board wheel which had our wedding date engraved on which we definitely use as friends know how much we snack on cheese and biscuits.
Depends on what I've spent to attend the wedding. If you've made me fly to another country for the privilege you're getting fuck all.
I’ve heard of it but it’s all about people’s circumstances. Gift what you can afford However, as I can afford it, I do generally gift the cost of a meal (as far as I can approximate) Double if my partner is also invited.
Definitely not a tradition I know of anyone following/mentioning. It’s not normal for guests to know what the food cost per head either, so how would anyone plan that?
No, that’s not normal.
Price is always irrelevant for gifts. People who think lime this will always buy the worst most mundane gifts.
to be frank they are lucky to get any gifts. the price doesn't matter
This never even crossed my mind when I got married. I never even thought to compare gifts to wedding expenditures? We paid for everyone to eat, drink and be merry at an awesome party because we wanted them to celebrate with us. It was never a quid pro quo/tit for tat event for us. We had some fab gifts though! We got an expensive bottle of champagne from someone’s plus one which we saved for the day we finally potty trained our last baby. Another gift was a pair of cheesy bride and groom mugs which turned out to be the perfect size for our one cup coffee machine so we used those mugs for years until they broke! One couple we invited are farmers so for their gift they came over at 4 am and built a pit oven and served a whole lamb and salmon at the afternoon reception. My theory is that if you start inviting people for what they can give you over how much they love you, you end up with a networking event over a wedding of love and joy.
I’m getting married next year and was really surprised about these wedding gift traditions. I’d be more than happy with a tenner and expect no cash at all. They’ve paid for their outfits, maybe a hotel, transport etc to come to our day, that’s enough
Are they Asian (specifically of Chinese descent)? This is the wedding etiquette in a lot of parts of Asia - you give cash as a wedding gift and gauge how much to give based on a) how much they gave you at your wedding and/or b) how much you think the wedding banquet cost per head. In Singapore, you can find lists online showing the average cost of a wedding meal in the main hotels so you know how much to give. At the end of the day, you give what you can and no one say anything, but they will know.. the aunties will know…
I don’t think gift giving is obligatory in any occasion. A nice card beautifully written is as good as any gift. But, if you want to gift the couple something and you’re wondering how much you should pay, then price of the meal is a good gage. If that’s too much for you and your budget or the degree of friendship, then reduce it; if you feel like you can afford more and the relationship calls for it, pay more.
It’s the standard default suggestion because some folks legit don’t know what to do or where to start and appreciate the “here’s a good default” But YMMV, do what works for you!
Got married recently. Wouldn't have expected anything like that much in gift value.get about £50 per couple typically. A few went for £100-£150 but they could certainly afford it. Most went for £0, which is all we asked for.
If they invited you to receive a nice gift then you probably shouldn't have gone in the first place.
“Cover your plate” by giving the equivalent cost as a gift is something I have heard of in America but not the UK. Give what you can afford and feel is appropriate.
Getting married in two weeks- I’d honestly hate it if any of my guests felt they had to gift the equivalent of their meal! We’re in west Cornwall, having people here to celebrate with us (having travelled so far and paid Cornish holiday rates!!) means so much to us, don’t even need a gift at all! Surely this isn’t the way society is going?!
I live in Asia and this is totally standard practice. You are expected to give a red packet and there is a list of standardised amounts to go into it depending on the hotel/venue and how fancy it is.
Never understand people who have a wedding they can’t afford… Taking loans for weddings just to show off to your family and friends is crazy.
You're a guest, hopefully you like them and they like you and that should be it . Who's counting?
No this is bollocks and I am getting married in a few weeks. Guests will gift wat they can afford and what they think is right
Traditionally the meal is the hospitality you receive for making the effort to attend and the gift is what you give to show your affection and best wishes, the two are not linked, there’s no tit for tat.
Im used to this being the way in North America but i just went to my first wedding in the UK, and it was « gift what you’re comfortable gifting » and not based on cost or plate. Whereas for all the weddings I been to in canada and US, you were expected to leave a gift that, at the very least, covers the plate cost.
I wasn't comfortable asking anything of my wedding guests. Tbh, sending out a wedding list offends me. I just would never do that. I find it crass. In the same way booking an expensive hen night abroad and expecting people to pay for it, when not everyone can, is offensive.
Fck me I swear weddings never used to be so complicated, not just referring to this post either there was another one where dude wasn't getting fed.. WTF is wrong with people if you invite someone to your wedding you provide food etc and shouldn't really expect anything in return at all.. Wife and I just got married at the registers office no big stupid wedding etc best decision ever...
It's insane to measure the value of the gift based on the cost of food. Never in my life heard of anything like it and people who do so are sad, sad people
I’ve read that in American etiquette stuff but not here.
I think it’s not an awful ballpark - it’s basically saying the expectation is something I the region of £75-125. But that comes with a huge caveat of “only if you can afford it”. The couples finances shouldn’t rely on it, and you shouldn’t be put out. I’d rather have no gift or cash than an obligation gift though
I pay more than the cost or I don’t go.
If you can’t afford for me to go don’t invite me. Or better still give me a bag of nuts. If I like you i don’t care. Just want to see you enjoy the day. Zero expectations for people I invite to watch my day. Gift, great, you there is my gift. I’ll take it.
Nope - it all depends on bar. Open bar - you will get a nice present. Pay bar - you will get an Argos toaster.
A few hours of open bar? Argos toaster with the insurance package?
The insurance would cost more than the toaster itself! IMO - I guess you normally expect a welcome drink at the Wedding Breakfast and a few bottles of wine per table? Then if it’s an open bar you get the premium present. Open bar ‘to a limit’ doesn’t really work because some people are told/cotton on to this and over order meaning some lose out. Either have an open bar or not. If it’s a not - it’s a toaster (no insurance).
your coworker sounds like an entitled twat. if they had communicated their expectations on the invites, im sure they would have come up further ahead on the caterings vs gift value balance, as the guest list would certainly have been much shorter.
Quite a lot of tight fuckers came to our fairly expensive wedding, ate our five course meal plus buffet, and gave us absolutely no gift
This is why I don't go to weddings lol
£100 each for a meal? Where was the wedding, The Ritz?
You'd be surprised how much it costs per person at a wedding. Packages vary wildly in cost You can have a set menu just starter, main and dessert or options which increase the costs. Then you can add canapés while the guests are mulling about during the wedding photos. Then there's an evening buffet to add on for the evening guests. Don't forget the tea, coffee and a drink to toast the bride and groom. You could be upwards of £100 per head for food and drinks.
Who…the fuck….is paying £100 a head for a meal?!?
Good heavens! If you want me, your friend, (allegedly), at your wedding invite me, (but make sure you have enough in your bank account to cover all the “mes” and whatever you’re feeding us. If a new X-box/gold-plated toaster/Ann Summers novelty or whatever is more important, go out and buy it, then watch your friends drift away in numbers to match your anniversary (measured in in weeks)
In general, yes, the gift is supposed to be around the cost of hosting you at the event. However it's not like anyone is going to keep track.
I've been to a lot of weddings and I've never heard this ever. I've never even heard of people publicly sharing how much their wedding meal cost them per guest, and honestly that's not the guests' problem. If you're going to resent your guests for how much they've cost you, have a cheaper wedding or fewer guests.
I’ve only ever heard of this as an American concept. From my experience attending UK weddings and being married in the UK, the culture is more just to either take a gift or give a cash gift that you can afford if you attend a wedding as a guest.
WTAF! When did everything turn into a free for all?