How to ask for money instead of gifts
Nobody wants to write this line, and every couple has to. Wording that asks plainly without sounding like an invoice.
6 min read
Two things are true at once. Most couples living together do not need another set of glasses, and most guests genuinely want to know what would help. And yet the line asking for money is the hardest sentence on the whole invitation to write.
It is hard because it breaks a rule. A gift is supposed to be the giver’s idea. Naming an amount, or even naming the category, moves the decision from them to you, and everyone can feel it happening.
Here is what actually solves it: say what the money is for. A guest is uncomfortable funding an abstraction and perfectly comfortable funding a thing.
Wording that works#
We have a flat full of everything two people need. If you would like to give something, we are putting it towards a week in Japan, and we will send you a photograph from it.
Your being there is the present. If you would like to do more than that, we are saving for a kitchen that works.
We are not doing a list. Anything you would like to give will go into the deposit fund, which has been a long time coming.
No gifts, honestly. We mean it and we will not be checking.
The four rules#
- Name the purpose. A honeymoon, a deposit, a kitchen, a first year. The purpose is what turns a transaction back into a gift.
- Make it optional out loud. One clause, early, that lets somebody give nothing without feeling it.
- Never name an amount. Not a suggested figure, not a range, not a per head cost. This is the single line that makes people angry, and it makes them angry for years.
- Keep it short. Two sentences. Three at the very most. A long explanation reads as a defence, and a defence implies you think you are doing something that needs defending.
Where it goes#
Not on the front of the invitation, and not near your names. It goes in its own small section further down, after the practical detail, under a plain heading. On a printed suite this usually means a separate card, which is part of why couples put it off. On a digital invitation it is a short block a guest reaches when they are already reading, which is a gentler place for it to appear.
Cash, a fund, or a list#
A registry or list. Easiest for guests, because the decision is made for them. Worth doing even if half of it goes unclaimed, since it gives the people who dislike giving money somewhere to go.
A honeymoon fund. The most natural sounding of the money options, because the purpose is built into the name.
Plain cash or a transfer. Completely normal in many cultures and slightly awkward in others. If it is normal in yours, do not apologise for it in the wording. An apology invents a problem the reader did not have.
A charity. Generous, and it does change the tone of the day in a way people remember. Name one charity, not three.
The line to never write#
Anything in verse. Every rhyming gift poem in existence reads as an attempt to make an awkward ask cute, and the awkwardness survives the rhyme. Plain sentences are kinder and, oddly, less embarrassing to read.
And never explain what the wedding cost you. The moment a number for the catering appears anywhere near the gift line, the invitation stops being an invitation.
