mello hates you ([info]telophase) wrote,
@ 2008-05-06 12:32:00
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Entry tags:poll

I was reading a guest article on the Get Rich Slowly blog complaining about wedding registries, wherein it mentioned that the author hated having gifts sent to the couple and preferred bringing them to the wedding with her. And it wasn't until comment #35 that someone pointed out what proper etiquette says, and also what I think: bringing gifts to the wedding Just Isn't Done, because the couple are, 9 times out of 10, not going back home after the ceremony and thus have to figure out what to do with all the gifts. Especially so if the wedding is not taking in the same city, state, or country that the couple live in.

So therefore I turn to the internets to find out why people bring gifts to the ceremony...



Poll #1183553
Open to: All, results viewable to: All

When you give a wedding gift for a wedding you are attending, do you...

View Answers

Have it sent to the recipients
14 (38.9%)

Bring it to the wedding ceremony with you
18 (50.0%)

What is this word "gift" you say?
4 (11.1%)

If you chose "bring it to the wedding," why? (Feel free to use the comments.)

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If you chose "bring it to the wedding," did it ever occur to you that the couple are probably not going home after the wedding and have to deal with the hassle of figuring out what to do with the stuff?

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Yes, and I DON'T CARE!
1 (3.1%)

Yes, but I did it anyway for reasons I shall elucidate in the comments
11 (34.4%)

Uh, no, it never occurred to me
6 (18.8%)

Since I have my gifts shipped or take them to the couple's house in person, I shall choose option SANZO instead.
14 (43.8%)

[info]telophase is just cranky in general today, thanks to driving through a huge thunderstorm to get to work. What should she do?

View Answers

I plan on buying a copy of Project Blue Rose: Human Touch...

View Answers

As soon as pre-orders open!
6 (17.6%)

At A-Kon!
0 (0.0%)

When I have the money for it!
10 (29.4%)

Uh....I'm supposed to buy it?
1 (2.9%)

Is Sanzo in it?
12 (35.3%)

I'm still stuck on that question about bringing gifts to wedding ceremonies.
9 (26.5%)

Mello's fabulous ass
13 (38.2%)

BACON!
16 (47.1%)


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[info]yhlee
2008-05-06 05:48 pm UTC (link)
I answered BACON! on the last one because I am hoping for contributor's copies instead. :-D

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[info]telophase
2008-05-06 05:49 pm UTC (link)
Hee! I suspect there are contributor's copies in the future. XD

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[info]kate_nepveu
2008-05-06 06:17 pm UTC (link)
I'm not sure if I've ever given cash, but if so, I'd probably have brought it to the reception. Otherwise, ship ahead of time.

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[info]movingfinger
2008-05-06 06:35 pm UTC (link)
I've brought gifts AND shipped them. I brought when I knew the couple were going home afterward. Shipping usually for weddings far away. I've noticed that shipped gifts are generally not acknowledged.

The number of people bringing gifts, and the custom, is well enough known that I believe it's usual to delegate one of the bridesmaids or another Reliable Person to take charge of the presents.

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[info]telophase
2008-05-06 06:39 pm UTC (link)
It's one of those things I can't get too worked up over most times, but in cases like a former roommate of mine, who lived in Denver and who was staying there after marriage, but who got married in South Carolina where she grew up because most of her and her fiance's relatives were there, it's a whole 'nother matter. People still brought gifts to the wedding, thus forcing them to pack a lot of fragile items and ship them to Denver.

Edited at 2008-05-06 06:39 pm UTC

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[info]tammylee
2008-05-06 06:46 pm UTC (link)
Ha! I read that article this morning too.

Frankly, I've NEVER been to a wedding that didn't have a 'gift table'. Pile them gifts up! It isn't up to the bride and groom to lug the presents back to their place. That is what the maid of honour and mothers and aunts do. The weddings I've been to there is a gift opening at brunch the day after the wedding.

I always give a gift at the wedding but it is usually money. =x I give real presents for bridal and baby showers. For my brother's wedding I was extra rude and also gave him a book on how to manage his finances! Hahhahahahaha!

I've also never been to a wedding where the couple leaves asap for their honeymoon. Maybe it's an Albertan thing? Or maybe my experience is just limited?

I'd actually never heard of mailing wedding presents out ahead of time?

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[info]telophase
2008-05-06 06:53 pm UTC (link)
I'd never heard of bringing gifts to the ceremony until after I'd graduated college, when we had to scramble to get a table for them at a wedding I was the maid of honor for. And it was NOT one of my duties as maid of honor to lug them back. I didn't have a key to their place.

And I've never heard of a gift-opening as a social occasion outside of the wedding shower.

So: what do you do in cases where the couple are getting married in a place other than where they live? It seems odd to me to force them to spend money on shipping the stuff to their new home.

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[info]tammylee
2008-05-06 07:56 pm UTC (link)
And it was NOT one of my duties as maid of honor to lug them back. I didn't have a key to their place.
The weddings I've attended the Maid of Honour pretty much handles all that stuff for the bride. *shrug* I've no idea how that is all worked out.

I'm assuming it's a regional variance. We do have a high Ukrainian population here so maybe some of these traditions I've seen has to do with that? But yeah, Maid of Honour (and whomever she can recruit) handles moving the gifts which are received at the reception (and cleaning up after the reception if it is a rented hall) and there is usually a gift opening for close family/friends/wedding party members the day after the reception. Three weddings I attended this gift opening happened at the bride's parents' house. The other weddings I wasn't really close enough to the bride and groom to find out what happened with the presents after the reception.

I've never attended a wedding that wasn't in the bride and groom's hometown so I'm not sure how that would work. I'd assume they'd have instructions on the wedding invitation about what to do with gifts?

I know it's practical to send a present in the mail but unless you aren't attending the ceremony I've never heard of it being done. It was an eyeopener for me!

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[info]tammylee
2008-05-06 08:06 pm UTC (link)
Oh, wait! My dad and stepmum got married in Waterton National Park and we all stayed in a group campground. I don't remember any wedding presents tho. Just a lot of beer. XD

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[info]sleary
2008-05-06 07:28 pm UTC (link)
I think you and I grew up in similar cultures. Having the gifts mailed to the recipients was a new and different concept that I didn't even consider until I started attending weddings for friends instead of older relatives.

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[info]telophase
2008-05-06 07:34 pm UTC (link)
And with the milieu I grew up in, you either had the gifts sent, or brought them to the couple yourself. And if you gave a wedding shower gift, you were not obliged to give a separate wedding present.

And technically, you weren't obliged to give a present at all - a wedding invitation isn't an excuse to extort stuff from your friends and relatives, it's an invitation to share in the happiness of the day. Which is why it's considered crass to have anything, even a "No gifts, please" or a notification of the registry, included in the invitation. The traditional way to figure out what the couple wanted was to phone them and ask where they were registered, whereupon they'd divulge the info over after a few "Oh you don't have to give us anything!" protests, or call one of their mothers, who'd tell you that and also let you know what they really wanted or needed.

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[info]cicer
2008-05-06 09:54 pm UTC (link)
And technically, you weren't obliged to give a present at all - a wedding invitation isn't an excuse to extort stuff from your friends and relatives, it's an invitation to share in the happiness of the day.

I think you and I (and perhaps Emily Post) are the only people on earth who still believe that! From what I understand, most people would never dream of not putting gift information in the invitation...but yeah, I think it's really tacky.

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[info]telophase
2008-05-06 10:05 pm UTC (link)
Yeah. If I ever get married, and if I end up with a traditional ceremony, I'm not putting it on the invites. If people want to give me presents, they can just ask me or my mother (or look up my name at Target or Amazon.com XD). I'd put "no gifts please" or designate a charity on the invite, except that's tacky also. XD

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[info]lady_ganesh
2008-05-08 01:20 am UTC (link)
Yeah, if people want to give you shit, you're supposed to say thank you and smile, heh.

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[info]smillaraaq
2008-05-07 03:55 am UTC (link)
I think you and I (and perhaps Emily Post) are the only people on earth who still believe that!

If anything, the gift-registry culture has gotten sufficiently entrenched that I've known a lot of people who get upset if you DON'T include gift information, because they'd rather buy something they know the couple want, and not have to play telephone-tag to try to get the information. So depending on what one's invitees are used to, it's really sort of damned if you do, damned if you don't...

As for the poll, I couldn't really answer this properly because I've done both -- I've shipped stuff (registry or otherwise), particularly when the wedding was out of town or something I wasn't actually attending, and I've taken things directly to the reception when everything was being done locally. I'm used to seeing gift tables at the reception, but where I grew up is such a cross-cultural mishmash that I'm also used to seeing receptions involving money dances, origami cranes, leis, and a round of banzai toasts...

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[info]tammylee
2008-05-06 08:00 pm UTC (link)
Even my friends' weddings had gift tables! I've mailed presents to friends when I can't attend their wedding but that's the limit of my experience.

I wonder if it relates back somehow to the 'gift train' where the couple would stand together and guests would file by and give them gifts or money? I actually don't mind that (even if it takes a while) because then at least you can actually GIVE them the present, wish them a happy marriage, get a 'thank you' then move on to the food! =D

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[info]lady_ganesh
2008-05-08 01:19 am UTC (link)
EVERYONE in my family brings gifts to the reception. EVERYONE. When I got married the only gifts I had sent to me were cards from people who could not make the actual ceremony. And this is both sides of my family!

If I sent a wedding gift a head my mom would give me the Crazy Face.

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[info]oyceter
2008-05-06 07:06 pm UTC (link)
I've brought gifts because all three weddings I've been to have been about five minutes from where the couple lives. Also, in one I was the bridesmaid, so I just brought the gifts over to their house anyway ;). The other two, I know they have giant hordes of friends helping with planning who probably have it figured out, and also with the wedding being about five minutes away (both also had gift tables and bridesmaids and/or other helpers recording all the gifts).

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[info]therck
2008-05-06 07:18 pm UTC (link)
For most of the weddings I've been to, the parents of one of the parties getting married took charge of the gifts at the reception. I'm used to seeing tables set aside for the gifts. Of course, I'd also say that 90% of the weddings I've been to took place where someone involved in the thing actually lived. The ones that didn't... Well, I'm trying to remember any apart from my sister's.

Shipping gifts would simply never have occurred to me. It makes sense now that I consider it, but it never occurred to me. (And now I wonder what my father did after his second wedding. They packed up a small van the next day and headed across the country with no definite address or destination. They kind of intended to go to California but ended up stopping in New Mexico and staying there.)

My sister did specify no gifts when she married for the second time. That was a Las Vegas wedding with everyone involved having traveled across half the country. She'd picked Las Vegas because everybody was going to have to travel anyway. She looked at prices and realized that, for most of us, a ticket to Las Vegas would be cheaper than a ticket to any place near where she lived.

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[info]chomiji
2008-05-06 07:31 pm UTC (link)

In the days before online registries, my cousins almost never included registry info on the invitations. I guess they thought it was like asking for gifts. So we usually just picked out something that we would really have liked to have ourselves - nice glass pitchers are almost always a good choice - and wrapped it ourselves and brought it with us - because we were usually driving in from out of town. There was generally a gift table, and a lot of other out-of-town cousins doing the same.

In fact, it wasn't until I was planning my own wedding that I encountered the idea that it was rude to do this.

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[info]telophase
2008-05-06 07:38 pm UTC (link)
My token "I don't know what they want" gift is a nice picture frame. :D And I carefully do not enquire after it later in case they hated it and got rid of it. XD I won't give glasses after a friend of mine got three sets of really ugly drinking glasses.

I have friends who got married on a cruise - no ceremony, they just did the legal stuff before they left and made vows to each other privately on top of some Mayan ruins. They way they handled gifts was to say "Oh, you can get us something from our Amazon wishlists" when any of us asked. They'd been livign together for years and didn't need any more stuff.

So that's how I ended up giving them a book on dead bodies and [info]rachelmanija's memoirs for a wedding present.

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[info]badnoodles
2008-05-06 08:04 pm UTC (link)
Plain, solid-colored towels. You can /never/ have too many of them, 'cause there's always a need for regular towels, guest towels, and manky towels for cleaning up muddy dogs and hair dye.

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[info]chomiji
2008-05-06 10:25 pm UTC (link)

That's a good idea too!

Also, civilized-looking hotmats/trivets, so you don't have to put the dinner party hot dish either down on the table directly or on some gronky thing you've been using in the kitchen for ages.

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[info]kyuuketsukirui
2008-05-06 08:32 pm UTC (link)
All the weddings (not a lot) I've been to there've been gift tables and they were full, so most if not all people brought gifts rather than sending them. They were also local weddings and to my knowledge no one was going on a honeymoon afterwards. It would not have occurred to me to ship it even if they were, though, as I've just never heard of such a tradition.

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[info]cicer
2008-05-06 09:52 pm UTC (link)
I always mail gifts to the couple, whether or not I'm attending the wedding (I'm usually not, due to the fact that my extended family and most family friends live on the other side of the country). But for the few weddings I've been to, there's been a gift table and the maid of honor or other family member is responsible for collecting the gifts and taking them to the couples home. It does seem like a hassle to me, which is why I never bring gifts to the wedding. But then, most couple I know do go home after their weddings, so it's not such a big deal, I guess.

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[info]qem_chibati
2008-05-07 06:09 am UTC (link)
Parents took care of it for the couples who's weddings I went to. Or for the ones where I wasn't invited but still wanted to congratulate I gave in person.

*shrugs* I'm organising my own wedding and am not concerned about the gifts. It'll be my maid of honours job to take care of it. :)

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[info]awamiba
2008-05-07 10:35 pm UTC (link)
It honestly had not occurred to me to ship something until the wedding I went to a couple weeks ago, and only then because the store the couple was registered at only had 5 items off the 5 page list and the manager said I might rather ship the gift. I was appalled, actually. We had a special card we wanted to put into the package and stuff from elsewhere. Not to mention the fact that it was less than a week to the wedding when we went shopping.

I've been to many, many weddings in several states and have never attended one that didn't have a gift table absolutely stuffed full of gifts. In all but one case, the bride & groom were retiring back to their own home after the wedding (and in that case, we packed stuff into cars and drove the gifts to their parents house, where it was held until after the honeymoon). The gifts magically made their way to the couples house via the bridesmaids or family members, from what I heard.

When Nick and I got married, we were still in college and there was a general outcry during the reception that we were expected to open gifts, which was completely unexpected, but totally fun. (We weren't going to be able to have a brunch the next day to open gifts with family & friends due to flight time restrictions for the honeymoon.)

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