Apologies for being OT, but the group is a wealth of info!
1) Is it usual/acceptable to send a wedding list to people who are only invited to the evening reception? 2) As one partner had previously been marrried, is it usual/acceptable to send a wedding list to people who bought a present for the first wedding?Any thoughts?
I don't claim any great expertise in this are, but here are some personal views based on my own experiences of attending weddings.
IME, this happens when the ceremony itself has only a very small number of attendees such as a few immediate family, in which case I would say that's fine. If it's a larger ceremony but you are choosing not to invite some people, then it's probably unreasonable to expect gifts from those people.
Perhaps you could enclose it with the returned present from the first wedding? ;-)
Personally, I dislike the idea of wedding lists at all, but I haven't been closely involved with organising a large wedding. If you do a list, I would not send them with invitations, but have someone nominated to coordinate presents who can supply a list on request and cross off items as they are reported back as having been chosen.
I've been to 2 weddings where both partners were remarrying, and in both cases the instructions were that your attendance was the only gift expected. Even so, many people brought along some small item, and immediate family had coordinated a few more substantial things.
I dunno. It's the reception that usually costs the money these days - the actual service itself is relatively cheap. Unless somewhere very fancy.
So I'd not think it unreasonable to give a present in the same way as you do when invited to dinner, etc. As it were.
Etiquette does not dictate that wedding presents should be returned. Normal "form" is that the bride & groom keep presents given by their respective families/friends.
Quite.
That would be vulgar.
OK.
The variations are endless and might depend on very individual circumstances. It is a field in which there are wildly different opinions.
Some things to consider are your relationship to the people, the expense of the evening reception and any precedents that have been set. It is important to have a wide choice of gifts, including some of lower value that might be more suitable for the evening guests, who won't be buying you 100 pound Sabatier sets in exchange for a few vol-au-vents and a free drink at the bar. That doesn't mean having them buy a single plate for 20 quid. Have some items of a more complete nature in the 10-20 range that won't deny such people the warm fuzzy feeling of buying something that will be remembered. Lamps, cushions and chrome kitchen tools are good for this.
In our case, the majority of the evening guests were work colleagues, where a succession of previous weddings had already set the precedent, which was to indicate the list, so the decision was not difficult.
In all cases, not just evening guests, the list was indicated in an explicitly optional way and on a separate sheet of paper with all the technical details, such as timings, maps, instructions etc.
However, some people who we knew to be resistant to gift lists, we printed out differently worded rubric with no mention of it. We even had individual reply cards. Some asked how many would be attending (if we liked them or their partners), whilst others just pointedly named just one person and had a yes or no reply.
We used the John Lewis gift service, which was absolutely excellent. The range of stuff is good. It has a bit more cachet than Argos. You get a scanner and can just wander around the store and scan the barcodes, which is a surprisingly carthartic experience. You can add new stuff at any time. Guests can either buy online, or go to the store themselves. They can take the goods away for a personal presentation, or they can let the shop do all the logistics.
In some circles, things move very differently. A friend of mine married an American recently. They still have a strict "no mention" rule when it comes to gift lists. They ended up with lots of gifts from the americans, who are used to phoning the bride's mother for the info, and barely a gift token on the UK side, although it was skewed by the main wedding reception being in Ohio.
IME, yes, especially when some of them weren't keen on the original choice!
Christian.
I would second this. My niece recently got married and used the service - so easy! Just log in to the website, chose the gift, click and pay. It's wrapped and delivered for you and you can be sure to have bought something that is really wanted.
Dont know about JL, but debenhams charge each buyer a delivery fee of £3.00, you cant collect the item yourself and give personally, and the delivery is made in bulk by debenhams directly, yet they have gained numerous delivery charges!, say there are just 60 people buying, thats a charge of £180!
I think it's more tasteful to indicate that a gift list exists at a department store than to enclose a "Demands List" with the invitation.
Nowadays, Amazon online vouchers or credits to the happy couple's Paypal account are probably de rigeur in some quarters.
I gave two friends all the Air Miles I had accumulated, which very almost paid for the honeymoon flights to France (and cost me nothing).
Owain
There were no delivery charges when I used the JL service
OT question so here's OT reply :-)
Recently went to good friends' wedding. Somewhat to our surprise (as we thought of them as rather non-materialistic people) they eventually got together a JL gift list. I asked about Oxfam unwrapped and he said they'd considered it but one pov (he didn't say whose) was that it was nice to have something tangible too. We bought them some china and a goat.
At least one person on this ng would probably have preferred the goat, and the china could have gone to Africa :-)
Owain
Excellent. Food and something to put it on for the reception. Nice barbecue?
I've been to one wedding where a wedding gift _was_ a pig. Roasted at the reception.
(Not last weekend's though - I think the couple paid for that porker)
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