Weddings - a nice little earner??

Rocker

Not as Musicians, Photographers, Hotels, Car hire etc.  But for the Bride and Groom.  With the current practice of couples living together for years, [house completely furnished etc. etc.], the decision to marry might possibly be to avail of the riches available.  

[Cynic mode].

I have been made aware that most such wedding invitations include the line 'Money only Presents'.  And a little research shows that hotels charge around €40 to €50 per person for the wedding meal.  The average wedding present per couple seems to be around the €200 mark.  Which adds up to a large pot of cash even when the Band, Photographer etc. have been paid.  It is no wonder that these "newly married couples" can go on honeymoon to Mexico or Hawaii or New Zealand.  And all without borrowing a red cent.

[/Cynic mode]

Is this the situation in the UK or is it confined to Ireland?

RaymondLin

I doubt a family of 5, with 3 children all under the age of 18 are going to cough up €1,000 between them, more like €200 for the entire family if it's a close family to the B&G. Friends you'll be hard pressed to get £50 each.

Rocker

You have a point @RaymondLin, but it is mostly couples that get invited to weddings.  Nephews and nieces of the bride and groom - probably but that is someone elses' problem.  €200 per couple is the average 'present'.  No place any more for the more traditional present such as a set of china or a canteen of cutlery.  Not wanted any more.  Just money.

jd0272

A nice kettle from Asda is my 'go to' gift for such occasions. A cheap one. To be found in B&B's/hotels across the globe, so they MUST be very popular/desired.

RaymondLin

To do it as an intention...let's say 100 guests, all couples, that's 50 envelopes. At £200 each you are looking at £10,000.

The venue, car hire, dress, make up, alcohol, suits, registrar, may be a church wedding, room for the hotel, decorations, cards, flowers, music, photographer, cake, evening buffet and then the rings. Are you really going to come out on top?

chrispy108

Not sure where you pulled  €200 from Rocker, but I certainly don't know anyone that 'made money' on their wedding. If you've just pulled that from some blog article somewhere, then go research wedding costs, €40-50 a guest would be the cheapest you could find I would guess. I never added mine up, but between venues, transport, chair covers, cutlery, wedding meal, drinks, evening buffet, singer it would have easily cleared £100 a head.

Raymond's estimates are much more in line with my experience.

guitarfishbay

Rocker said:

You have a point @RaymondLin, but it is mostly couples that get invited to weddings.  Nephews and nieces of the bride and groom - probably but that is someone elses' problem.  €200 per couple is the average 'present'.  No place any more for the more traditional present such as a set of china or a canteen of cutlery.  Not wanted any more.  Just money.

Which makes infinite more sense than the tradition of giving 'stuff.'

The idea is you're celebrating their wedding, and helping them on their way to their new life together.  Stuff is nice, but most people have stuff already.

This is already a tradition in some cultures, I'm aware of it in some asian culture and the wedding guest numbers can reach hundreds if not more.  Smart couples use the cash to pay a chunk of their mortgage off or put towards their deposit if they get a few grand - a better investment than a toaster which will break in a few years.

As for the amount of money I think that should be up to the people giving as 200 euros is a lot, given the amount of other costs already involved in attending a wedding (hotel and sorting out suitable attire can add up to a fair whack).

In principle though I'm totally for money over stuff.  Let them buy their own stuff!

Hootsmon

Rocker said:

Not as Musicians, Photographers, Hotels, Car hire etc.  But for the Bride and Groom.  With the current practice of couples living together for years, [house completely furnished etc. etc.], the decision to marry might possibly be to avail of the riches available.  

[Cynic mode].

I have been made aware that most such wedding invitations include the line 'Money only Presents'.  And a little research shows that hotels charge around €40 to €50 per person for the wedding meal.  The average wedding present per couple seems to be around the €200 mark.  Which adds up to a large pot of cash even when the Band, Photographer etc. have been paid.  It is no wonder that these "newly married couples" can go on honeymoon to Mexico or Hawaii or New Zealand.  And all without borrowing a red cent.

[/Cynic mode]

Is this the situation in the UK or is it confined to Ireland?

if I received an invitation card with money only presents on it I would return post haste with  it's own problems written on the flipside

jonnyburgo

We certainly didn't ask for money only, that's just fucking cheeky, people should be able to buy what they want. We still got a nice lump of cash, and the usual stuff. around £1200 if I recall correctly. 

RaymondLin

One of the venues I photographed charges £20,000 for a wedding. There is no way they came out on top. One bride had a £5k+ dress, and she paid my full fee + transport and stay in France.

Yes, you can do it really cheap, village hall and recycle your mum's dress but ask yourself this, if that is the kind of people you are, are your friends sort of the same too? The reason I ask is that I tend to find people of a similar, if not for a better word - class, befriend each other, the circle of friends are on similar level. So the ones that earn big bucks have a larger and bigger wedding, and they won't skim on it to make money from guests. Like wise, the couples with smaller budget, their friends from what I've met, don't earn big bucks.

You may ask how do I know? It's quite easy to guess. I've photographed one wedding with 160 guests and the car park was just full of German and Italian sports cars with a few Aston Martin thrown in. The small weddings tend to be your Ford and odd BMW.

They are all nice people, but if the guests are the sort of people who give £200 as gift then they are earning quite a lot and the happy couple would be on similar grounds and the wedding will reflect that.

ROOG

Wow, just Wow!

There seem to be quite a few people out there with greater expectations than my Mrs and I.

I recall that we were just grateful for the modest gifts that we received.

Registry office wasn't overly pricey either!  :0)

It was a great day and party after, probably down to the people who came to wish us well, not fork out for flash stuff. 

PolarityMan

Our guests were pretty generous but the average gift was definitely less than £200, probably more like £50 with only a few couples giving up to £200 (the best man for example). 

Even so there's no way we even came anywhere close to covering the cost of the wedding and certainly not the honey moon.

At the end of the day we spent what we did because we had exactly what we wanted and to be honest as much as the wedding is "your day" it's also a really big deal for close family, especially parents and grandparents so we were more than happy to splash out.

It's something you only do once after all.

guitarfishbay

I think 'on top' is unlikely but that doesn't mean money is a bad gift idea. I've no plans of getting married in the near future. But if we did and people gave us material gifts anyway then that is nice, but I find the idea of a specific wedding gift list (there are sites for this now, you buy through them so they don't get two of the same) on par with asking for money - if you spend the same then what is the difference if it is cash or some household item from a list?

The point of the wedding is celebrating with whoever you want to invite, I really doubt people are taking a business look at their mates.

chillidoggy

Our wedding cost us £100.

BenSirAmos

"If it were not for the presents, an elopement would be preferable." Not sure when George Ade said this, but I think he died in 1944 so the concept of a wedding as a nice little earner is not new. 

boogieman

We didn't get anywhere near that from most of our guests when we got married last year. I reckon the average spend on gifts was £50ish, although we did get a couple of bigger presents from close family. We certainly wouldn't have dreamed of asking for cash, I think that's incredibly rude. We spent £13k on our wedding, we had 90 guests. That covered literally everything though: venue hire, food, drinks with the meal, evening bar, music, photographer, rings, flowers, dress/suit, cars, even the honeymoon.

Rocker

My figure €200 per couple is what a few of our friends actually gave as wedding presents. And hotels charge around the figure I mentioned. Some charge more, a lot more in some cases, but good value is to be had in Ireland these days. And the couples went on exotic honeymoons as mentioned. Kinda hard not to be a little cynical.......

Iamnobody

I wouldn't dare ask for cash and as a guest find the usual alternative - a wedding list to be a pain in the arse, as all the cheap stuff had usually been allocated!

I play it safe and give vouchers. It wouldn't be £200 either even to family!

I've never really heard of anyone profitting from a wedding...unless parents pay for the wedding and they get a load of cash gifts like the Asian example.

RaymondLin

Rocker said:

My figure €200 per couple is what a few of our friends actually gave as wedding presents. And hotels charge around the figure I mentioned. Some charge more, a lot more in some cases, but good value is to be had in Ireland these days. And the couples went on exotic honeymoons as mentioned. Kinda hard not to be a little cynical.......

They probably went to exotic honeymoon because they saved up and can afford it ? 

Danny1969

We asked for wine as presents as you can get a nice bottle for less than a tenner and cheaper than that sometimes. The dearest thing was the band, we had the same band that Chris Evans had for his daughters wedding but that was done on mates rates as well as a present to me from them I only recently polished off the last of the wedding wine but still got lots of Champers left

thomasross20

I paid £100 as did most my other friends for another friends' wedding. 

I don't think it SHOULD be expected but they thought so. They said it helped recoup the cost but they could have had it in a barn for all I cared. I think it's a bit cheeky to be honest! At the same time, if I were ever in that situation money would be perfect to recoup the cost! Supposedly it's a big thing in Turkey and they even give gold as presents - but it has to be high quality or it gets thrown in your face I hear.