Wedding Gift Guides
You have a link and a budget and about four minutes. Here's the short version.
What to spend
There's no rule, despite what you may have read. The old "cover the cost of your plate" line isn't etiquette. It started as a rough convention, and it puts the guest on the hook for a choice the couple made about their venue. Spend what's comfortable.
That said, people want a number, so here are honest working ranges:
A colleague, a friend of a friend, a large wedding where you barely know the couple. Entirely appropriate and nobody will think twice.
A friend. This is where most wedding gifts actually land.
Close family, a wedding party member, or someone whose wedding you would have flown a long way for. Group gifting sits naturally here too.
Attending as a couple? One gift between you is standard, not one each. Bumping it up a little is a kind touch, not an obligation.
Travelling a long way? Flights and a hotel are a real contribution to the day. Spending less on the gift is completely acceptable, and any reasonable couple knows it.
When the registry is picked clean
You open the link three days before the wedding and everything left costs either $18 or $340. This is extremely common. Your options, in order of how well they usually land:
- Contribute to a cash fund if one exists. Always welcome, any amount.
- Group with another guest on one of the expensive remaining items. A text to one other person solves this in five minutes.
- Buy several of the small things. Four $18 items is a $72 gift, and the couple genuinely needs the small things.
- Go off-registry with something specific. See below.
Going off-registry
Allowed, and sometimes better. But the reason registries exist is that couples receive a great deal of well-meant, unwanted stuff.
Off-registry works when you know them well enough to be confident, the gift is consumable or experiential, or it's something meaningful that a registry would never hold.
Off-registry misfires when it's decorative, when it needs to match a home you haven't seen, or when it's a large object with a strong opinion attached.
Ideas that consistently land
- Something consumable and good. Nobody has ever resented excellent olive oil, coffee, or a case of wine.
- An experience. A restaurant they have mentioned. A membership somewhere.
- The boring thing they need. Good knives, decent towels, a proper saucepan. Deeply unromantic and used every single day.
- Something for the first week home, which is a strange, flat, exhausted stretch that nobody plans for.
Is cash rude?
No. It's the most-wanted wedding gift by a wide margin, particularly for couples who already live together and need very little.
If it feels impersonal, the fix is a card that says what it's for ("toward the trip," "toward the house"), which turns a transfer into a specific, thought-through gift. More on that on the etiquette page.
When to send it
Ordering to arrive before the wedding is easiest for everyone, since the couple isn't hauling boxes home from the venue. You have a grace period afterward if you miss it, and while the traditional window is often given as a year, sooner is kinder.
Next: Registry etiquette, including the questions nobody asks out loud