Post # 1
Member
2215 posts
Buzzing bee
Let me start off by saying that I know that in no shape or form gifts are mandatory from wedding guests. I am extremely grateful for the people who spent the day celebrating my marriage and for all the gifts I did received. I am genuinely curious, though, if this is the norm or not…
Most of our grown adult cousins, ones that are married, have their own lives, and have kids, did not get us a gift or card. Their parents signed their names on their cards and gifts. The gifts did not reflect that lots of people contributed. Most of the gifts were less than $100 from 6-8 people. I thought this was maybe just the norm on my hubby’s side, but my very affluent cousins did basically the same thing; they did buy one card from 7 people, but didn’t include a gift…I guess their parents’ generous check covered them, even though their parents didn’t sign their names on their card??
Hubby and I aren’t rich by any means, but we’ve always written our own checks for our cousins. I wouldn’t even think of having my parents cover our gift. I’m a grown adult and make my own money, so I should be able to contribute my own something to the bride and groom.
Please don’t flame me…I’m just curious if I’ve got the whole wedding gift thing wrong.
Thoughts?
Post # 3
Member
242 posts
Helper bee
We haven’t received many gifts yet but we did get a nice present from my bridesmaid’s parents. The card was signed from her parents…and from my friend and her fiancé. I was a little confused by that. I mean, they don’t even live in the same state at each other, not to mention we are in our late 20s.
I suspect we will have the same situation as you with some family members. I don’t really have any expectations as far as gifts go.
Starting with our engagement, we are doing all gifts from the two of us (before he would give a gift to a family member and I would give a separate gift) and no more piggybacking on our parents’ presents. Everyone has their own situation and reasons for doing what they are doing, though.
Post # 4
Member
5091 posts
Bee Keeper
We had a few do that (including one cousin who’s close to fifty and has a fifteen-year-old son, and she and her husband piggybacked on her eighty-year-old parents’ gift!), and I was a bit confused, but whatever. It doesn’t change the fact that DH and I continue to give our own, separate gift.
Post # 5
Member
963 posts
Busy bee
I think it really depends on how close you are to the individual cousins. If you’re close, then yea, I’d expect them to give their own gift. If they’re not close, they may have the mentality that their parents handle all the family obligations.
Post # 6
Member
47429 posts
Honey Beekeeper
Chances are the younger people didn’t buy or bring a gift and the embarassed parents added their names ot the card or told them to also sign their card.
Post # 7
Member
210 posts
Helper bee
I’m in agreement with VAWife here — I think it depends on how close you are with your cousins. Fiance and I had two weddings on my side this year, and my family is huge, and we are not at all close to them. We went off and started our own life and are really only coming back for these weddings because my mom asked us to, not because we feel like said cousins would’ve even noticed if we’d went. That said, we did “piggyback”, in a way — my parents contributed for half of the gift and we contributed half, then all four of our names went on the card. I realize that my cousins might think that my mom just threw our names on the card, but we really did pay for half — we just didn’t buy our own because a) we have no idea what these cousins need, being that we are not at all close to them, and b) just the fact that we aren’t close to them. We don’t expect each of our cousins that come to our wedding to give us a gift separately.
Having said that, once we’re married we’ll probably do our own thing, and if we have kids we definitely will give our own gift. But just as a different perspective – it mgiht not have been the parents “covering”, it might’ve been split like we do?
Post # 8
Member
2215 posts
Buzzing bee
We are both close to our cousins. We both grew up having our cousins as playmates, so they aren’t distant by any means. I just found the situation extremely interesting. We even went out of our way to give all our cousins +1’s, and there’s no way those plates were “covered.” Oh well, no biggie.
Post # 9
Member
699 posts
Busy bee
Hmm, odd.
There were several family all together gifts, but those were cases where the cousin’s kids are young and not truly self-sufficient yet. Definitely no cases of married cousin’s/etc tagging into parents. All of the “together” gifts made sense (students, 19 year olds, etc).
I’d continue to give gifts from you and your hubs 🙂