Wedding Gifts
April 13th, 2006 @ 5:05 pm by Mrs. Bee
We still haven’t sent a gift for the last wedding that Mr. Bee and I attended. 
Actually my excuse is that the bride is moving to New York after the honeymoon and I didn’t want the gift to get lost - I only give gift cards to the store they’re registered with for couples who live in Manhattan. A lesson I learned after our small apartment was filled with gifts that we just didn’t have the room for.
One of the most common questions people ask me is, “How much should I spend on a wedding gift? Do I have to spend as much as they spent on my dinner? Do I have to spend more if it’s a fancy wedding / less if it’s a casual wedding?” Generally your budget and how close you are to the bride and groom should determine how much you spend. “No but how much would you spend?” they ask.
Most of the time I spend around $150 on a wedding gift. For my closest friends, I might spend up to $200. For family, even more. For someone I’m not as close to, I would spend around $100. And for a big church wedding where everyone is invited and/or I’m not particularly close to the couple or a coworker that invites the whole office and/or I’m not particularly close to, I might spend $50-$75.
I’ve read statistics on several different occasions that $150 was around the average spent on a wedding gift (which I thought was a little high). But when I was doing research for this blog, I came up with $85 and $70-$100 as being closer to the national average.
I’m sorry if you’re sick of them, but we’re addicted to our new polls feature! 
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10 Responses to “Wedding Gifts”
ah an excellent point about per person or per couple. perhaps a mini followup post!
Good point. Yay, followup post!
for my wedding i had couples give me $25.00
dinner was about 85.00/plate… i think couples/people that haven’t planned a wedding don’t know how much to give…
even thinking that 3 guys split 50.00 total… thinking that was more than enough.
i was actally okay with the idea of not getting much, but the hubby didn’t like that at all…
how would you feel?
and oh… i like your polls 
i mainly attended asian weddings. normally we would give 100. but if they are family, if we attend i think we gave like 300. so i really does depend on who the wedding is for.
since i’m asian..we do it the asian style and just give money. haha my family would give $100 bucks. if its someone close we give $200-300. and it depends on who the wedding is for too. just like bluang3lbby..i love reading your site mrs. bee!!! =] and thanks for the teachings of the koreancooking xanga!
Is that for a couple? What if you go by yourself?
Another thing that Mr Ant and I consider is how close we are to both the bride and groom. For example:
Mr Ant is good friends with groom, but not bride = $
Mr Ant is good friends with both bride and groom = $$
Both of us are good friends with bride, but not groom = $$
Both of us are good friends with bride and groom = $$$
This is a wonderful wealth of information. Good Luck!
Mrs. Bee, New York
Age and Occupation: 29, Weddingbee Publisher
Fiance's Age and Occupation: 33, Internet
Engagement Date: May 7, 2004
Wedding Date: March 5, 2005
Venue: Westside Loft, New York
About Me: Yes, my name really is Bee! I love my blogging, wikis, and tabasco sauce!
Do you mean $$$ per person/guest or per couple?
I generally give around $100 per person/guest for non-nyc weddings (cuz frankly, they don’t cost as much) & not close friends.
For very close friends or nyc weddings, I’ll give $125-$200 per person/guest — i.e. in nyc, the minimum gift mr. firefly and i would bring to a wedding is $250 for the both of us…
russians tend to give more, so i would give at least $150 per person for a family friend wedding. generally, you try to “cover your plate,” but with nyc weddings easily costing $200 pp (not even including tax/tip), its getting harder to do that.
If I don’t attend the wedding, I generally spend around $50 - $100 total exept for my very closets friends (one very good friend eloped; obviously i spent more than that) regardless of whether I was invite with a date.