Being a wedding guest can be expensive – travel, accommodation, a new outfit – and now there is another cost to factor in: the present. While Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce have a no-gift policy for their rumoured wedding, it is now commonplace for invitations to read: "Your presence is enough, but if you would like to give us a gift, please donate to our honeymoon fund."
But replacing the traditional gift list with bank transfer details leaves guests with a new etiquette dilemma: how much are you expected to give? Wedding list service Prezola says it has seen a rise in couples inviting guests to pay for specific experiences rather than a generic cash pot, and that the average guest contribution is £116.
“Wedding cash gifts average £116 but vary widely, with some guests giving £50 and others up to £400.”
Expectations vary widely depending on closeness, culture and the cost of attending. Jonny, 34, says he and his wife Lottie contribute between £250 and £400 depending on how close they are to the bride and groom and what they can afford. "We don't have that many friends, so it's nice to give generously," he says. At his own wedding, most close friends gave between £100 and £200, one couple gave £400, and they received £2,000 from Jonny’s dad. They used the contributions as spending money on their 17-day honeymoon in Canada, which Jonny says they had saved for “because it's not worth the risk of relying on donations”.
But not everyone is giving hundreds of pounds. Hannah Rose-Thorn, 30, says she “always gives £50 in a card” and found that the average contribution to her own honeymoon fund was the same. "We mentioned money on our invitations and also created print-out QR codes for people to scan at the bar," she says. She received £3,000, which will be used as spending money for the honeymoon she had already paid for. According to Hitched, a UK-based wedding planning website, the average UK couple spends around £4,000 on their honeymoon. Hannah says she also received physical gifts despite asking for money. "We got a lot of champagne and some flute glasses from my boss at work, which were nice, but we have a lot of that so it will most likely get regifted," she says.
Jonny says some wedding guests will ignore the request for money because they want to give something more meaningful. "They mean well, but it probably means you'll get a bunch of John Lewis and M&S vouchers, like we did, as well as some physical gifts too," he says.
