Wishing well at a wedding etiquette?

[kateo]

We are off to a wedding on 1st March.
How much is appropriate to give as a gift for a wishing well and do you put it in a card with best wishes or do you give just in a blank envelope?

[Joski]

General rule of thumb seems to be that you give an amount commensurate with what the couple is paying to have you as a guest. For example if it costs $120 per head (guesstimate) and you and a partner are attending then you would give $240.

Having said that, rules are made to be broken and I use this as a guide only. Usually DH and I cap out at about $150 for the both of us and if it is a couple we are very close to then we also give a small gift in addition to the wishing well. I always get a lovely card and write a message from both of us. I think it is nice for people to keep the cards and look back at them long after the money is gone.

HTH

[Tinks]

You can do whatever, most people put the money in a card while others put it in a blank envelope. I usually give what I'd spend on a present. $50-$100 is a good amount to give.

[RainbowRiver]

I usually give money in a card. I love getting cards so pass my passion on. Depending how close I am to the wedding party, I give $50-$100.

If we gave the CPH x2 as another poster said, I'd be broke!

[Marley&Me]

General rule of thumb seems to be that you give an amount commensurate with what the couple is paying to have you as a guest. For example if it costs $120 per head (guesstimate) and you and a partner are attending then you would give $240

HTH

Yes this. But i would cap at around $150. You generally get plenty of notice before a wedding so gives you time to put a little money aside for the occasion. DH and I were so broke after paying for our reception that we basically had nothing left for our honeymoon. So the $$ from guests saved us!

[little_O]

Culturally we generally give money. We rarely go to a wedding were there are gifts.

You always give a card, money inside, because that is the gift from you. The main idea is you are helping the couple with a good start to married life.

As far as amount, that depend on what you can afford and want to give. We follow the rule of thumb of cph+some. Of course that is just works for us.

And like Tasha said, normally the notice you get for the wedding helps to put money aside.

[Tinks]

If the couple want the amount they spend on the guests, maybe they should ask people to pay their own way. It annoys me when couples expect a certain amount of money from people. I thought weddings were about celebrating a life event with friends and family, not a money making scheme. ....sorry, just a little vent.

[Jellyfish]

I wouldn't even think about trying to figure out what they've spent on you and gifting it in return, it's not a business transaction! They aren't a restaurant you've gone to for dinner... just seems really odd to me to be honest.

I'd gift what you would have spent on them as a gift. For us we usually do $50 for friends, $100 for close friends and family, $150 for close family like a sibling.

Don't over think it, I know for most people I know it's all about having you there to celebrate and enjoy, not what you 'pay for the privilege' :P

Oh and we usually include a card so we can write some well wishes and such but you can always give a card seperately too which some do.

[little_O]

If the couple want the amount they spend on the guests, maybe they should ask people to pay their own way. It annoys me when couples expect a certain amount of money from people. I thought weddings were about celebrating a life event with friends and family, not a money making scheme. ....sorry, just a little vent.

I don't know of any couples that expect a certain amount? I certainly didn't. As guest though that's the guide we use.

[meow]

We had no expectations as to cash values when we had a wishing well for our wedding. We used to spend about $50 as a couple but after the amounts we received we increased it and now we generally give $100 as a couple. Some people gave us about $20 and that was fine too. Whatever. I certainly wasn't actually intending to recoup the cost of the wedding.

[Amy_jellybean]

We usually give $100-$150 for friends and $150-$200 for close friends or family. We had a large wedding a did not expect guests to contribute anywhere near what we paid per head. We had some cards thats were empty because people simply couldnt afford to contribute which was totally fine. We had others that didnt even bother to put a card in which ill admit annoyed me. I wanted cards as a keepsake of our friends and family spending our special day with us x

[kateo]

WOW!!! I would never have thought of giving what the CPH was!
I would normally spend around $80-100 so from reading this that seems OK.
I will now look for a really lovely card or have a friend make a really special one for them.
When I read the first post I honestly thought I'd not go to the wedding 'cause even with time to save we just couldn't afford that plus babysitting for half a day.

[Beatrix]

I give what I can afford. Sometimes it's $50 other times is $100

I won't make myself broke for a wedding nor would I expect anyone else to stress over the amount they give.

[Jellyfish]

You generally get plenty of notice before a wedding so gives you time to put a little money aside for the occasion.

If I knew somebody was having to scrimp and save in order to give me a gift I'd feel kind of horrible about it. Happy just to have their pressence and a card to help remember it by. I'm the one choosing to have a wedding after all and if I invite someone it's because I want them there to spend the occasion, not so they can help me fund it.

[Tinks]

For those who give cost per person as a gift, what if you have to travel a considerable distance to the event? Or if you have to book accommodation or a babysitter? Do you take those costs into consideration?

[little_O]

For those who give cost per person as a gift, what if you have to travel a considerable distance to the event? Or if you have to book accommodation or a babysitter? Do you take those costs into consideration?

Good question. For us, we try to give the best we can afford to the married couple. If they feel we are important enough to them to include us in their special day, we try and return the feeling.

So in line with that, if we have to travel a long distance for the wedding, obviously our budget would be a bit different. We travelled to a wedding in Italy for one of dh's best friends. We couldn't afford to give them the same as if the wedding was local. We gave what we could.

As far as the cph thing, I certainly don't know how much each venue costs etc, so it's a guess on what we'd be costing them and then easing it.

[CoNNiE_Melb]

This is a tough one. I haven't been to a wedding in a long time that DIDN'T have a wishing well - maybe it's our generation?

I generally give approx $100 per head, so if it's DH and I - $200-250 (depending on how close we are to the couple).

Very close friends (DS's godparents) of ours are getting married next week. The venue they are going to is approx $200/head... It's their prerogative to go to such an expensive venue, so I don't think they expect people to 'repay' them. Having said that, DS is the page boy and they have bought him an outfit, including shoes etc, and we are very close, so we will be giving them $500.

I do think it all gets a bit much, particularly when you've been invited to everything leading up to the wedding:
- Engagement $250
- Hens Night $100
- Buck's weekend $800 (thankfully DH didn't go)
- Kitchen tea $120
- New dress, shoes etc $350

At the end of the day, you give what you can and what you want to.
We had a flight centre registry for our wedding (rather than a wishing well), so people either put money on that or gave us cash and we didn't judge amounts we were given. We were pretty thrilled to get anything!

[lilima]

I could never afford to do CPH. If we had done that none of our friends could have come to our wedding. We got married a long time ago- back when all our friends were young and poor!

We had a flight centre registry. Guests donated to that, and we were given a list from flight centre of people who contributed, but did not know the amounts. We just had an overall total.