In most of the cases for the guests it is not as important what is the gift as much as the gesture. However, in the recent years brides are going for the cheaper and cheaper gifts, often dollar stores quality gifts.
I was once in the store waiting for my turn. A
couple was looking for the wedding favours that they didn’t want to pay more
than $10.00, including wrapping. Wrapping was supposed to be $5.00 without any
extras that they wanted. Merchant response was that unfortunately he has
nothing in their price range, and that maybe they can go to dollar store for
the gifts and bring them in for wrapping.
In my opinion, regardless how understanding the
guests can be and how little they can care about the $ sign on the gift, giving
a gift that is screaming “cheap” into their faces, can be insulting.
New trend among the brides is to donate money to
their charity in lieu of the wedding favours.
I wander how did that start? Is it that they found that
donations to charity instead of sending flowers to the funeral is a great idea and
that they can use it for their wedding? Is it that they simply misunderstood
news that some wealthy couple donated all of their wedding gifts to the charity?
Prince William and Kate Middleton asked their wedding guests to donate to charity rather than buy them traditional gifts, but they still gave their guest
wedding favours. Or did the charities themselves (which never have enough of
money regardless how much they get) started this trend as a new way of fund raising,
all they had to say is that the couple will save money on the favours and their
donation is for the good cause, and there we go.
If the couple
ask their guests to donate to their charity because they don’t need any gifts
or money, and hand you a tiny “thank you for your donation” scroll as the
wedding favour is one thing, but when bride has gift registry for the bridal
shower and preferably monetary gifts for the wedding (which is hundreds of
dollars this days for a couple attending a wedding), and hand you that little
scroll as the wedding favour, makes you think what are the weddings all about
this days?
Many will
probably argue that wedding favours end up in the garbage anyway, and charity
donations are for a good cause. You are right and at the same time wrong.
I have a
favour received some 20 years ago, letter opener, simple, elegant and good
quality, guess what? I am still using it, and yes, some favour went to the
garbage, like a dollar store quality table clock which didn’t work the first
day.
Charity
donations in lieu of wedding favours to me is just a cheap, easy way out. No
need to run around to find the favour, going back to pick them up and so on,
and spending probably $10.00-$15.00 per invitee. With donations you can do all
from your computer or over the phone, donate $50.00, print little scrolls yourself
and you are done without much sweat. Good cause? The way some charities work
that money will go into the advertising, traveling, salaries and very little if
any for the research or whatever the charity is about.P.S. This post are my thoughts without any intentions to offend anybody, and I apologize to those that feel offended.
