The lucky few invited to the rumoured wedding bash of Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce have been told to bring no gift at all. For the rest of us, the etiquette is more complicated — and far more expensive.
Once it was a simple choice: pick a toaster from the John Lewis list. Now, invitations increasingly read: “Your presence is enough, but if you would like to give us a gift, please donate to our honeymoon fund.” Bank transfer details have replaced the bridal registry, leaving guests wrestling with a new dilemma: how much is enough?
“Guests divided over cash vs physical gifts as wedding gift lists give way to honeymoon fund requests.”
According to wedding list service Prezola, which has seen a rise in couples inviting guests to pay for specific experiences rather than a generic cash pot, the average guest contribution is £116. But expectations vary wildly depending on closeness, culture and the cost of attending.
Jonny, 34, says he and his wife Lottie give between £250 and £400 depending on how close they are to the couple and what they can afford at the time. “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 his father contributed £2,000 — money that went towards their 17-day honeymoon in Canada. Jonny stresses they had saved for the trip “because it’s not worth the risk of relying on donations”.
Others take a more modest approach. 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. To encourage donations, she says: “We mentioned money on our invitations and also created print-out QR codes for people to scan at the bar.” The strategy worked: she received £3,000, which she will use as spending money on a honeymoon she had already paid for. The average UK couple spends around £4,000 on their honeymoon, according to wedding planning website Hitched.
Despite the cash requests, many guests still turn up with physical gifts. Hannah says she received “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.” Jonny agrees that some 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.
The experience of Chelsea Chivers, whose story was cut short in the source, remains unknown. But as wedding costs rise and couples increasingly ask for cash, the question lingers: for those not invited to Swift’s no-gift wedding, how much is the right amount to give?