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Interesting questions! I'll be interested to see what the responses are.
I ROFL'ed at some of the caption on the poll! You rock heather! 
ETA: I voted 0% but we asked for no gifts... Not sure if that really counts.
ahhaha Meerkat! I have been smiling at my 401K one for a minute. Couldn't wait to use it in something.
We got about half what we spent but we paid for everything up front from a separate wedding-budget so if we got anything it was "extra".
I STILL have giftcards that I'm trying to use from the wedding though. Funny that I just used one of our wedding gifts to buy maternity pants.
Haha...awesome poll!
We got more than what we put into the wedding. Though not everyone did the "cover your plate", the people who gave more than that covered everyone else. We also had a lot of people who didn't attend send gifts. So we received slightly more than what we spent.
We got about 10% back - but it was bonus because we didn't really expect anything back to cover wedding expenses!
We got back more than WE paid for the wedding..however, as a percentage of TOTAL money spent on the wedding (money spent by us and our parents), we made back about 30%.
We live in NYC and cash gifts are by far the norm for weddings...out of 150 guests, I think we received like 5 tangible gifts, and the rest was cash. We received gifts from all but two guests, including a bunch from people who didn't attend.
Your options are hilarious =]. We ended up with about 15% in cash back. A lot of people only gave $40 or $60, which was expected and no big deal.
Hey guys, I have updated this post to include waiting and engaged bees as well. Plus I added one of my all-time favorite clips.
Well we delibrately asked for no gifts. We both had fully stocked households and needed nothing, in fact we threw a ton of crap away.
A few people did give us cash/checks but I never thought of it as recouping the wedding money. I only spent 5K on the wedding. reception and pig roast held the next day and he paid for the honeymoon. There was no way we were going in tp debt for a wedding!
I should clarify. Recouping in this instance doesn't mean what did you get in gifts that had to be applied to outstanding wedding costs and debt. I just mean what was your gift to expenditure ratio.
@heather25: We spend abtou 11,000 and GC's came to a little over 1000 and we got about 1500 in cash....
I said 100% but that's only considering the $ DH and I spent on the wedding, not the overall budget. We ended up coming out even almost exactly after the miscellaneous expenses like DH's tux, gifts for everyone, our portion of the RD and our honeymoon. So it's a little disconcerting to think about if we had paid for the entire affair, but then again we wouldn't have done something so elaborate on our salaries..
I don't think you could put a value on what we "recouped" for our wedding. Let me explain. We had a quickie, impromptu JoP ceremony and the only people who attended were our 3 kids, our parents, his sister, my brother, and my brother's 2 kids. Everyone got extremely short notice (like 1 hour!) to assemble and no time to buy any gifts or do anything else!
Our gift was our parents watching our kids and our siblings taking our kids for a few hours, too, while we went on a long weekend honeymoon in our area. Now that, to me, was priceless!
Cash gifts were lower than I expected in terms of the # of people who gave them. I was really surprised at how many items we got from our registry as wedding gifts! When you add that in, I would guess we go from about 14% (just cash) to closer to 25%.
My daughter and her husband recouped more than double what THEY paid out, but in terms of the total cost, it was 60%.
In NJ, mostly cash, only 3 gifts.
We got about 10% of what was spent total (by us, and both sets of parents) in cash. About 3% in gift cards.
Cash-wise, we received about 30% of our total wedding costs (a nice surprise for DH and me)! :)
@Aubergold: I don't think so. I am used to giving cash. The couple can then buy what they want or save it for a rainy day.
Our guests were extremely generous. We received mostly cash. We weren't expecting much, but earned around 75% of our wedding money back!
Well, including my parents gift we definitely made money on the wedding! They gifted us a certain amount of money and said that we could spend it or save it. We saved about half.
oops I lied... I said 10-25, but I guess it was 26-50. We had one guest (a groomsman) who gave 25% himself. Yay for awesome and well-off friends! Other than that we had one semi-large check and about 5 or 6 small ones. Other gifts were from registry.
I never planned to "recoup" though. I thought of it as honeymoon/future money only.
@hilsy85: i can't remember- did you guys do a traditional registry as well? did you not put a lot of stuff on there?
Also, please post trends in your area. I think, for example, in the Northeast, most people bring cash and couples tend to receive back a lot of the money spent on the wedding.
I'm surprised that 9 people got 0%. I figured at least one person would give cash.
At least with the weddings I go to, we bring a gift to the shower and cash to the wedding.
@Ms. Meowerson: We did end up doing a registry at Bloomies, but most of the stuff was gone after the bridal shower. Also, in NYC, especially at a Jewish wedding, people almost always give cash for the wedding.
We got about a 1/3 of the cost* in cash from a 100 person guest list. We in live in NYC, and I would say almost all of our friends gave gifts. The few who gave cash were Chinese or Jewish. (Maybe 3 or 4 friends).
All of my family and my husband's family gave checks (my family is Chinese, so I expected that, and my husband's family is Midwestern caucasians, so I expected that they would give gifts, but actually, they all gave checks as well.)
For us, it was unexpected, and it covered our honeymoon plus we had stuff left over. We actually had pre-paid our honeymoon, so it was spending money and savings!
*Total cost of the wedding, including parental contributions.
Well, for what we ourselves paid for, we got about half back. It more than covered the honeymoon :)
I know this is an older post, but I'm interested in hearing more responses!
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That is, how much in gift money did you receive, vis-a-vis your wedding expenditures. Your answer should be a percentage of your final budget. Don't make this into a catty post. It's just a fun informational thing.
Also post your culture, region, or country, and if it is more popular to give cash or gifts (or nothing lol) at a wedding. Or post anything else that you might think relevant.
Edit: I included not yet married options as well. For those of you who don't know who Charlie and Sabrina are, you should just go away now. JK: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNv60bBTw3E