Wedding gifts , what to spend

Hey, I was looking for a birthday present for my boyfriend to be very original and inexpensive. Imagine that I found something like this under 10 British Pounds. You can have as a gift a real internet domain! You get a certificate with a tailored domain according your own suggestions (already paid for one year and on the certificate it is written that this domain is a gift from whom and for whom and for what reason (eg. their proposition was “stevemy.space” as for me ;-)) but it may be due to graduation or your first date ;-)) or anything). You can see for yourself - www.mensgiftideas.site

There is also a 1930s Beswick celery dish which was rarely if ever used. Celery usually appeared on the table in a glass jug instead.

It depends who the invite is from. If from a dear neice or nephew then £100 from us and if our sons are invited they also add in £50 each. I just write a cheque as never sure what people would really like so let them choose. If invited to a wedding of colleague and go with other colleagues and spouse not invited then usually about £30-40 depending on what is suggested at work. If invited to evening do with spouse then cheque for £40.

I still have some of my parents' wedding present. Two out of three of a set of bright ornamental jugs made in Czechoslovakia and a large pottery vase (which she much preferred) are on my bookcase.

1963. No list. We received a stainless steel meat dish with fearsome spikes (got rid of that when children were small), a Russell Hobbs coffee perculater in primrose china - looked lovely but dead fiddly so soon reverted to instant coffee - a pair of kitchen scissors, six cut glass tumblers (still have three or four of them), heavy glass fruit bowl in dark green (still have it), wooden cheese board (still in regular use), several Pyrex dishes used most days (much better than that very heavy and expensive coloured stuff most brides want today (wossitcalled?). Usually spend around £50 for non-family and certainly not contributing to honeymoons.

Friends' list included a loo brush so I put myself down for that. This was the '60s when wedding lists were fairly new.
Because I dislike lists and prefer choosing presents I also found two lovely cushion covers with orange hand painted poppies. Imagine my delight when I visited their new home and found not only that the cushions were on the sofa but that their carpet was also bright orange! Quite a coincidence since it was leftovers from the refurbishing of ship!

I still have the notebook from 1976 listing all our wedding gifts, who gave them, and a tick to indicate that a thank-you letter had been sent. Everything was appreciated, even if not used! (Like the boxed pair of pillowcases, which we still have!) Gifts ranged from a washing machine and Hoover, from our parents, to small gifts from my pupils (I was a teacher). Everyone was welcomed to the “show of presents” at my parents’ house, where I still lived before the wedding.

my auntie asked me what I wanted, so I told her 2 simple and basic bedside cupboards, she didn't have a lot of money and I had seen some cheap ones, which I actually liked as they were simple and just what i wanted - somewhere for a lamp to sit on and of course the morning cuppa! My mum fell out with her sister over them, and for years complained about the cheap present, but I always told her, I got exactly what I asked for!

a few years ago she remembered about them, so I again told her I got what I wanted and they had even lasted longer than my marriage LOL I was married for 24 years and 5 months and still had the bedside tables a few years later!

I got a fondue set - never used, 4 toasters, 2 kettles, oh and pyrex dishes, and i even have one of them, 37 years later and still used LOL

Christinefrance
We still use fish knives and forks, and got two (they come in sets of four, never enough) lovely sets of Robert Welch fish eaters for our 30th Anniversary!
If we're going to just an evening 'do', I think £25-00 per guest is appropriate, for daytime invitations £50-00 per guest, and if we're there all daytime and evening £75 per guest.
When our DS and DDiL got married, we pushed the boat out present wise, as he's our only child and we hope he only has the one wedding!
It should never cost the bride and groom more to have guests there than they receive in gifts!

Still using Tupperware received as engagement present 54 years ago. IL gave us a dining room suite which was a sideboard a table and four chairs in teak. Got 13 sets of towels. Spend about £100 now if wedding guests and £25 if not invited to wedding.

I did a last minute wedding. So no list. Chose a lovely Art Deco plate set at John Lewis if people did want to buy. Still use them and love them.

I know I have posted this before on a similar thread.
When my D's cousin in law was getting married more than 29 years ago, the most inexpensive item on their wedding list was a gravy boat, costing £97, my D's FiL was so disgusted he bought it and sent it from him and his 2 son's and their wives. He is very well off but he just didn't like the expectation.

Before 2nd marriage 26 years ago, we said we didn't want presents as we were very happy and already trying to amalgamate 2 households into one. We taught at ajoining schools and were firmly told that presents would be coming our way regardless. So we decided to start a new dinner service thinking that it would give people a wide price range going from S and P pots to casserole dishes. I looked at lots of different ones until I found one that I really liked. When I turned it over I saw that it was called Windermere which is where my DH came from so that seemed to decide it. Most of the crockery has been used on an everyday basis since then, although we never did manage to use the soup tureen.

I had a wedding list when I married in 1967, really just to let people know what kind of crockery I was collecting, and we received individual items. I got a lot of cookware and an ironing board but the largest gift was a vacuum cleaner from PIL.
Now I usually spend about £200 on a gift or vouchers but will not contribute cash to a honeymoon.

Maggiemaybe How could I have forgotten the Hornsea "saffron" pottery dinner set? That was my best dinner set! Oh, gift wise, £50 or £100 for close family and friends.

We haven't been invited to a wedding in ages so cannot answer the original question, but 40 + years on we are still using the stainless steel breadbin (similar available now), other stainless steel, pyrex, vases etc. we were given.
We had a wedding list but it was strictly only sent out on request not automatically inserted with the invite. I remember been given a set of pure cotton sheets which weighed a ton!

Happy memories! We displayed ours at our new home, tiggypiro - I remember guests coming to view them after the reception and before the evening do in our local pub. It was a serious business - our best man had to drive to pick up a cousin who'd bought us a suitcase, an hour before the wedding, so that it would be on display with everything else. We got bunkbeds from my parents and a fridge from the in-laws, lots of Silver Jubilee tea-towels, mugs, ashtrays, ornaments (it was 1977), some Denbyware (still in use), a Hornsea Pottery coffee set that I wish I'd kept, toast racks, a cheeseboard. We had a written list but very few asked for it. One item I remember putting on it was a trendy wicker laundry basket. A relative ticked that off and turned up on the wedding morning with a huge garish purple and pink floral plastic one, because she didn't think it decent for our smalls to be visible through the wickerwork. We still have it in the cellar, full of the DGS's footballs and frisbees.

Married in 1971. Yes, stainless steel tea tray, butter dish, meat tray with lethal spikes and pyrex dishes. Pyrex was Chelsea design because I had collected a dinner set for my "bottom drawer" in this design. Three plates remain, you can just make out the design in a certain light. Candlewick bedspreads, one rose coloured the other yellow. M&S towels which lasted years. No luxury items as such, no fridge or washing machine. However, my parents gave us £50 for the plot deposit on a new build house which enabled us to buy our first home - cost? £3,750 for a big 3 bedroom semi! The foot on the ladder for our subsequent house purchases. Thanks mum and dad!

1974 - yes to the Russell Hobbs percolator - it sounded like it was burping when it was nearly done! 18 Royal Worcester casseroles and 72 ramekins. (Thank heaven John Lewis was happy to exchange for cash). Two presents still going - a Hoover Junior bought by my sister and another friend and a carving board and knive, fork, steel etc. We always think of the donors when we use them. 40+ yrs on.

I remember very similar presents you have all mentioned when I was married in 1970 and of course some are still in use today.
Did you also (as my mother insisted) display all the presents at the reception ?

I had a Russell Hobbs stainless steel coffee percolator Grannybear! It was a stylish rectangular shape, brushed steel, with a wooden knob on the lid. I don't know when they stopped making them. We had a Wedgwood coffee set with small cups, which sits packed in a box in our garage today; never used in almost fifty years. Good quality cutlery from a relative, still going strong and a stainless steel tea strainer and holder from a hard up friend which I use every day. (I still have the friend too)

I still have some of my wedding gifts - a carving tray, some Edinburgh crystal glasses and a canteen of viners cutlery. They are all used. I had a wedding list which circulated round family and friends and received towels, bedding and kitchenware (as far as I remember). My parents gave us lots of stuff as they were moving house at the same time - furniture, carpets, kitchenware, towels and anything else we were short of, as well as paying for the wedding.
The big difference nowadays is that couples already live together and have all the basics. None of my circle had left home before so we were starting from scratch.

I can't remember who bought them for us in 1971 but I'm still using the Pyrex casserole dishes almost daily! I love them and would be lost without them!

Can't remember what we got as presents( it was 60 years ago) except a Royal Albert tea service, all roses and gilding which we hated and subsequently sold. For a not very close acquaintance who had nothing, I can remember making up a collection of items in a plastic washing up bowl, including dusters, dishmop, rubber gloves, clothes pegs, tin of polish and washing line !Apparently, according to her mother, she was delighted! I blush to remember it now.

1979... a pressure cooker from my Aunt together with a statement of this being the only wedding present she would give so I had better make the marriage work, oh the irony... I often felt I lived in that pressure cooker during our very tense 27 year marriage!