Avoiding awkwardness - hoping for cash gifts

View quoted message I see Laura. I decided not to do a bridal shower, as it is really not a thing back in Europe. Thank you for your help

View quoted message That makes total sense. So far, I never had to travel for a wedding, which makes it easier for me. I hadn’t really thought about the gift in case I had to change provinces for instance.

Honestly, we are not registered. I am having a shower and on the invitation we put “monetary gifts are appreciated” to let people know that there is no registry.

In my opinion, it is always tacky and I think rude to ask for money. You don't have to have a registry, but if you don't put anything at all on your invite, it's just assumed.

View quoted message We are also on a budget but really just trying to keep it to what we can afford (no more than $8000) and not rely on gifts. Any money we do get will go straight towards our honeymoon.
I feel $150 is a very generous gift.... I never give that much and honestly with the amount of weddings i have attended the last couple years (and how much travel costs have been to attend those weddings) i cant afford to give $150 per wedding

View quoted message Thank you for the detailed message Andrea. I️ also tend to think that it might be rude or what, and this is far from my intentions so I️ will probably shut my mouth ^^

View quoted message Thanks for your response Maegan! Leaning towards not writing anything and just see how it goes. However every time I go to a wedding I give a minimum of 150$, and have seen many people not giving anything, which scares me a lot, as my fiancé and I️ are on a budget

I think that generally speaking, when there is no registry info listed, people default to cash. We didn't have a registry for our wedding and everyone gave money except one couple who gave an actual gift. I will say that we did receive an invite to a wedding recently where the couple asked for money to fund their house buying venture. As a homeowner, I get that that is a huge expense, but it felt a bit tacky to list that on your wedding invitations since most people give money anyhow. Just my 2 cents. You could also pick a travel voucher to list as your preferred gift so people know you are looking to subsidize your travel expenses when you move without directly saying that.

View quoted message I see. Then probably I should not write anything?

View quoted message Thanks Erin!

View quoted message Thank you for your help Sasha!

You read my mind! I was wondering the same thing also!! Moving to the Netherlands (my fiancé is Dutch) so it made no sense to have a registry but I was too nervous about what our guests might think about the money only gift. We were just going to word it in our invitations in a way that it does not seem forceful but greatly appreciated.

View quoted message I havent really put my mind to it yet to think about it much. We Might just put a blurb on the invitations about "no gifts are expected but we would love help with our travel expenses". Might do sething a bit more clever with the wording than that though hahaha. Wearetraveling in europe for about 6-8 weeks for our ho eymoon so its gonna bit a bit pricey! I honestly will not be offended though if people show up empty handed.

We didn't have a registry and we didn't say anything about it and everyone just automatically gave us money. I think it is generally accepted that if there is no registry, give money. If someone is wondering, they can always ask and then you can tell them what you prefer.

I think most people these days give cash. We had a registry and most people still gave us cash.

We didn't have a registry either, we wanted either cash or travel vouchers. On our website we had a separate page explaining that instead of a registry if people felt inclined to get us a gift they could get us a trip central gift card.

I'd say less than a quarter of our guests had seen that page and got us gift cards and the rest of the people who didn't see a registry or see the gift card page just got us cash.

All this to say that typically if people do not see a registry they will usually just give cash as the cash is technically supposed to be the cost of their plate at dinner. So you could just not put anything and people will more than likely bring cash rather than nothing at all. We didn't have a single guest not give anything despite us not really announcing we wanted cash or gift cards.

View quoted message Maegan, do you have any ideas so far? I really do not want to come off as rude or what. I come from Europe, and it is SUPER expected there that you donate money, however I am not sure what’s the situation here, and I really want to avoid awkward moments where someone comes empty-handed or what.

**following because we also will have no registry, but would accept cash to help with our honeymoon.