The Age of Unreason 34: What's a wedding worth?

By the end of my wedding, when I was a mere 19 years old, my husband’s pockets – jacket and trousers both – were spilling over with envelopes. These envelopes were full of cash. At a Jewish wedding, which my first marriage was, giving money to help the bride and groom as they embark on their new life together is both usual and welcome. In fact it’s a time-honoured cultural tradition. We received gifts, too, including 19 cut glass decanters, which, given that we were going to live in a one bedroom flat rather than Buckingham Palace, were beyond useless. The cash, however, came in most handy. By the time I married for the second time, a mixed faith wedding at a register office – I was 47 years old and mother to an 11 year old. My partner and I had a sizeable home of our own and enough crockery and linens to fill it, and even one cut-glass decanter with a silver topped stopper, which I’d hung on to because it was a thing of beauty if not of practical application. We did the thing that in the last few years has become so popular when mature couples marry and said that we really didn’t want presents at all, but if our guests were determined perhaps they could make a donation to our nominated charity.

The giving of money as a wedding gift that is commonplace in so many cultures – from Greek to Hindu to Chinese and many more – is now catching on with Brits, encouraged partly I’m sure by the increasing number of mixed-race marriages but also because so many youngsters today are struggling to put together a deposit to buy a place to live. According to wedding website confetti.co.uk nearly four fifths of couples getting married this year will ask for a financial contribution from their guests, either requesting it as a honeymoon fund or as cash for other purposes. This is a big change for born and bred Brits who still find money talk both embarrassing and a touch vulgar. Why else would the majority of couples resort to writing humorous ditties or silly rhymes such as ‘If you were thinking of giving a gift to help us on our way / A gift of money in a card would really make our day’.

If the couple finds it tricky to ask for ‘readies', so does the guest when it comes to the question of how much to give. A gift, even it comes off a list with everything on it priced, is less overtly linked to its value as it’s something the couple want regardless of whether it’s at the top or bottom of the price range. Guests feel more exposed when it comes to money and fear appearing mean even when they don’t have much money to spare. Personally, I don’t think they should waste time worrying about it. My advice would be to give around the same in cash as you would spend on a gift, which is presumably what you can afford and what you feel is appropriate.

Lifestyle