A Q for the married ladies: Total cost of wedding v. amount of gift $$$$

Original post by bluegreen08

Apr 05, 2008 12:32 PM

How does the amount of $$$ you got in wedding gifts compare to the total cost of your wedding? (not including rings or honeymoon)

I always hear people talking about trying to 'cover their plate' but there are lots of other expenses too. I'm guessing the average will be in the 65-75 range but I'm really curious

Disclaimer: yes, I know weddings aren't money-making ventures and guests arent supposed to pay for themselves etc. I'm just curious, and where else can you ask this kind of stuff?

bluegreen08 Posted: Apr 05, 2008 04:17 PM

Re: A Q for the married ladies: Total cost of wedding v. amount of gift $$$$

Posted by Espo22

thats why people shouldn't use CC's or so many even get loans. I told FH that we are going to pay just about everything in cash and we practically have. ONLY just recently we put a few things on CC but small items such as garter, rb pillow, cardbox and these are things we had to bc we got it online, alhough its fh's paypal actually and comes straight out of his bank account so nevermind lol. I dont even have anymore cc's i closed all of them and just have my debit card, and fh has CC's but he hasnt really used it for wedding stuff, i think one deposit of $500 for something bc we didnt have cash on us when we booked.

After the wedding i didnt want to pay off the wedding expenses and go into debt. This way what we do get, we can use it towards necessary things

def the right way to do things. CCs can be good if you rack up bonus points or cash back, but not if you are carrying a balance.

i try to use my credit card for groceries and gas because I get 3% cash back for those purchases, 1% on everything else, but I never carry a balance.

Espo22 Posted: Apr 05, 2008 04:28 PM

Re: A Q for the married ladies: Total cost of wedding v. amount of gift $$$$

Posted by bluegreen08

Posted by Espo22

thats why people shouldn't use CC's or so many even get loans. I told FH that we are going to pay just about everything in cash and we practically have. ONLY just recently we put a few things on CC but small items such as garter, rb pillow, cardbox and these are things we had to bc we got it online, alhough its fh's paypal actually and comes straight out of his bank account so nevermind lol. I dont even have anymore cc's i closed all of them and just have my debit card, and fh has CC's but he hasnt really used it for wedding stuff, i think one deposit of $500 for something bc we didnt have cash on us when we booked.

After the wedding i didnt want to pay off the wedding expenses and go into debt. This way what we do get, we can use it towards necessary things

def the right way to do things. CCs can be good if you rack up bonus points or cash back, but not if you are carrying a balance.

i try to use my credit card for groceries and gas because I get 3% cash back for those purchases, 1% on everything else, but I never carry a balance.

yeah now just to convince FH to get rid of his but i do have to say he has gotten alot better and even months ago paid off alot of his cards and then cut them up and now uses mostly just 1 with a larger limit. Slowly he is getting there.

Yeah if you get benefits from the cc's its great, as long as you dont spend alot on it

znycgirl Posted: Apr 05, 2008 05:33 PM

Re: A Q for the married ladies: Total cost of wedding v. amount of gift $$$$

We made back about 1/3.

Most of this was from VERY close family.

Our photog had staggered payments. That helped.

If money is a VERY big issue...pic a daytime wedding at a less expensive place....people, in general, will give a certain amount & not factor in how nice of a place it is, whether you had a Viennese hour, ect.

donegal419 Posted: Apr 05, 2008 05:50 PM

Re: A Q for the married ladies: Total cost of wedding v. amount of gift $$$$

We made back more than 100% of our wedding costs. i am including everythig from my out of twon bags to the hall to the honeymoon.

that said though, i had a FEBRUARY afternoon wedding reception and a reasonably priced hall and we shopped around for reasonably priced vendors.

hwoever, although we made more than the cost of it back, we paid for everything ourselves.... so in that sense, we only made about $8K. If our parents had paid for our wedding, we would have done very nicely.

drpepper318 Posted: Apr 05, 2008 06:14 PM

Re: A Q for the married ladies: Total cost of wedding v. amount of gift $$$$

We got back in gifts a little less than 50% of what we paid for the wedding.

bluegreen08 Posted: Apr 05, 2008 10:18 PM

Re: A Q for the married ladies: Total cost of wedding v. amount of gift $$$$

thank you to everyone who answered. the results were pretty different from what i expected!

JayLi2007 Posted: Apr 05, 2008 10:23 PM

Re: A Q for the married ladies: Total cost of wedding v. amount of gift $$$$

We got back about 25% of the total cost of the wedding.

JennNicole Posted: Apr 05, 2008 10:30 PM

Re: A Q for the married ladies: Total cost of wedding v. amount of gift $$$$

Keep in mind this is all relative to the type of wedding your having ,what venue you chose, the night you chose (Sat night most )and also how many out of towers are coming. Usually they don't understand the dynamic of NY weddings and or they feel since they are traveling they shave off what they would have given due to the expense. The less people you have at your wedding usually the better return. But AGAIN all relative given all the above factors.

teenigrrl Posted: Apr 05, 2008 10:34 PM

Re: A Q for the married ladies: Total cost of wedding v. amount of gift $$$$

if you take away the rings and HM, we made money. pretty much, we made everything back except our HM. we also had a sunday day wedding in feb, and that's as frugal as you can get. however, most gifts that we received did not reflect that it was a cheaper plate pp than a sat evening wedding in june.

yswedding Posted: Apr 05, 2008 10:41 PM

Re: A Q for the married ladies: Total cost of wedding v. amount of gift $$$$

Posted by donegal419

We made back more than 100% of our wedding costs. .... we paid for everything ourselves.... so in that sense, we only made about $8K. If our parents had paid for our wedding, we would have done very nicely.

can I invite your guests to my wedding!??!?!

beram63 Posted: Apr 06, 2008 08:00 AM

Re: A Q for the married ladies: Total cost of wedding v. amount of gift $$$$

great question! thanks for posting.

Summer07Bride Posted: Apr 06, 2008 09:18 AM

Re: A Q for the married ladies: Total cost of wedding v. amount of gift $$$$

We made about 60% back. We, however, did not pay for the entire wedding ourselves, so we got back over 100+% of what we put in.

Cpt2007 Posted: Apr 06, 2008 09:27 AM

Re: A Q for the married ladies: Total cost of wedding v. amount of gift $$$$

Posted by HamptonsBride

i think it depends on the type of guests you have..at least half of ours were OOT family on DH's side...they spent less (understandably) and bought registry items, we also got 3 gifts of art (his family is very talented)...but they all had to travel & pay for hotels, airfare, etc...we didn't even come close to 'breaking even'...but we didn't budget our wedding on how much we'd 'make' in gifts...just basically accepted the fact that the $ we spent was gone..haha

same for us. we never expected to get a single check, and budgeted on what we would be able to afford (we paid for everything ourselves). whatever we did get is being saved to be a down payment on our eventual first home.

irishgrl1017 Posted: Apr 06, 2008 12:04 PM

Re: A Q for the married ladies: Total cost of wedding v. amount of gift $$$$

I doubt we will make money. But like you said thats not the point.
I dont think many people realize how much a plate is nowadays....but it is waht it is!!!

donegal419 Posted: Apr 06, 2008 12:49 PM

Re: A Q for the married ladies: Total cost of wedding v. amount of gift $$$$

Posted by yswedding

can I invite your guests to my wedding!??!?!

seriously though, i have to say our family and good family friends of our parents were unbelievably generous. most of them gave us $500.00 or more.

also, i had my wedding in the winter during the day at a very inexpensive hall. that really made all the difference.

Mrs. V 2008 Posted: Apr 06, 2008 12:51 PM

Re: A Q for the married ladies: Total cost of wedding v. amount of gift $$$$

Posted by DGoldfarb0776

Posted by tcotier

Posted by Bride 2 Be

since my parents are paying for a lot of the wedding..we will hopefully make a profit...from what i hear you usually see about 1/2 of what you paid

I'd be happy with 1/2... FH's parents are paying for most of it. 1/2 would be a nice start towards a down payment on a house for us...

Exactly! DH and I made enough that we can start really buying new bedroom and living room furniture, and still have some left over since we have our apartment already.

Also we're planning on using it to pay off some debt (non-wedding) so that we can truly say we're debt free.

It's going to be great having a bit of extra cash.

1/2 would be awesome!! im planning on putting it towards furniture also!!!! and alittle bit in an account we will not touch (to be used for emergencies as they come up!)

Colleen214 Posted: Apr 06, 2008 02:24 PM

Re: A Q for the married ladies: Total cost of wedding v. amount of gift $$$$

Posted by Summer07Bride

We made about 60% back. We, however, did not pay for the entire wedding ourselves, so we got back over 100+% of what we put in.

same here. both our families and older, family friend type couples were extremely generous, however, people from out-of-state were not. most people from out of state gave us about 1/3 what their plate actually cost, although we were just glad they traveled to see us, so we didn't mind. other people's generosity more than made up for the people that gave little (or the few that gave nothing!!)

queenschic Posted: Oct 10, 2008 01:31 PM

Re: A Q for the married ladies: Total cost of wedding v. amount of gift $$$$

BUMP !

VickiR510 Posted: Oct 10, 2008 02:14 PM

Re: A Q for the married ladies: Total cost of wedding v. amount of gift $$$$

FH & I usually give at least 300 a wedding. Unless ts family then we give more. And if we are in teh weddign believe it or not we up it. But as for our wedding. I spent what we wanted without breaking our bank. Ilove everything i have choosen & wont change a thing or spend a penny less. Im not to worried about making it back. I know that its a arty & people will give what they can. And thats very sweet. Iknow my family & Fh's family will go above & beyond. Do i hope we make back teh RH at least of course but Im not going into anything with expectations.