The Money blog is your place for personal finance and consumer news. Scroll down to read about new research on how families with twins or triplets face are driven towards bankruptcy, PrettyLittleThing U-turning on its returns policy, and a survey on people's feelings about wedding gifts.
Wednesday 11 September 2024 19:24, UK
Wedding gift demands have been branded "cheeky", with a new survey finding a quarter of people think the amount spent on attending a wedding is enough of a gift already.
The research, by greetings card marketplace Thortful, found almost half (48%) think the expectation of cost for many wedding gifts is "annoying".
Other reasons those questioned were against wedding gifts are shown in this chart:
It comes as the cost of attending a wedding as a guest increased by 18% between 2022 and 2023 (from £883 on average to £1,045), with overnight stays and lavish hen and stag dos topping the list of expenses.
The surveyr found millennials are the most generous, while Generation X think you should spend the least, with almost a third of them stating less than £30 is sufficient for newlyweds.
Twice as many men as women said they would spend big money (£100+) on wedding gifts, suggesting men are more generous when it comes to gifts (or they just have more money).
For those who are open to wedding gifts, almost a quarter want to spend less than £30 for their friend's or relative's gift.
The most popular response, of the survey of 1,000 people, was to spend between £31 and £70 on the happy couple, and this was pretty universal across all regional categories apart from Northern Ireland.
Anyone hoping for a big spend on their wedding, just 3% said they would spend more than three digits, while two-fifth (20%) were unsure about how much to stump up.
'Can I have a Peloton bike please?'
Responding to the survey, Joshua Adams from Manchester said: "I feel like it's completely cheeky, they don't need these things and requesting them is slightly spoilt. People already spend a fortune on the stags or hens, travel to the wedding, accommodation, book days off work, get new clothes, then you turn up and they're like 'Can I have a Peloton bike please?'"
He said the concept of a wedding gift is completely different to what it once was: "I think times have changed. Back in the '80s when our parents got married, they tended to do it at an earlier age and they genuinely didn't have anything because they were young. The idea of a wedding list then was to help a new couple get started in life."
He said he has seen everything from air fryers to weekends away on the lists of weddings he has attended, as well as smaller, but "expensive" items, including cutlery and table settings.
Eleanor Lewington from Selby said: "I was once given a John Lewis wedding gift list where the bride and groom had selected items from the store that they wanted and none of them were cheap! There was everything on there from kettle and toaster sets to televisions!"