When you are invited to a wedding, one of the first questions that probably comes to mind probably involves how much money you should spend on wedding gifts for the happy couple. You may also be thinking about your budget and terrified at the idea of spending a significant chunk of your income on all the different wedding events – the engagement party, the shower, and the wedding itself. It is important that you fully understand that the only wedding event that requires a gift is the shower – everything else is up to you.
There are two main options when shopping for a happy couple – the wedding registry or cash. However, this is not to say that you cannot provide a gift that the couple has not registered for. Depending on the couple and their current status in life, a gift may be more preferable to cash. If you are not sure, always ask their parents or someone in the wedding party. Once you have decided which type of gift to bestow, you need to think about how much to spend.
When considering a wedding gift for any couple, you need to think about many different factors which include how well you know the couple, whether or not you will be spending money on transportation and lodging, social conventions within your family and friends, and your personal finances. First and foremost, think about your personal finances and come up with an amount that you will feel comfortable spending. When you are calculating this amount, consider the shower, engagement party, and the wedding itself. Typically, the closer you are to the couple, the more you should gift. However, if you are travelling a great distance to attend the wedding, you can be expected to spend a little less.
A good way to maintain a budget while shopping for wedding gifts is to portion out the amount that you will spend based on each event. Once you have come up with the total amount of money you would want to spend on the couple, you can break it down into percentages so that the most expensive item is reserved for the wedding gift. For example, you may want to spend 60 of your budget on the actual wedding gift, 20 on the shower gift, and 20 on the engagement gift. This is usually a fair and simple way to allocate your funds for a wedding event.
There are also other methods of determining how much money you should spend on wedding gifts. One way of determining your budget is to think about how much your meal will cost, which is generally between £30 and £80 per person and to spend about that much on the gift. However, no matter what the official rule is, never spend more than you are comfortable doing or more than you can afford. And regardless of what you choose to gift, as long as you have given it plenty of thought and it comes from the heart, you cannot go wrong.