Couples need cash, IVF helps new wedding registry trend

In September, a British couple attracted attention on social media after they treated their wedding guests like restaurant customers and showed them QR codes and contactless card readers at their reception.

“Take it easy and pay for our flights,” the couple wrote on a road sign, inviting friends and family to donate to their Mexican honeymoon.

“When the drinks started flowing, people became more generous!” said groom Chris Martin, 35. “Some of them even tapped more than once.”

While some may be shocked by the couple’s lack of embarrassment, experts reveal that when it comes to wedding gifts and registries, tradition is out and just about anything goes.

“Department store registries used to be huge,” said Veronica Moya, founder of micro-elopement company Wedding Packages NYC and the Love Chapel venue on 8th Avenue and West 56th Street. “But now, people are already living together when they get married, so they don’t need toasters and blenders and things like that.”

Couples are marrying older than ever (the average age in the U.S. is now 32, according to a Knot study), so requests for donations toward fertility treatments are becoming as normal as honeymoon funds.

“More and more people are having small, micro weddings,” Moya said. “When I ask my couples why they don’t go the traditional big wedding route, I say about 40 percent of the time they tell me about the cost of IVF.”

But keep in mind that those closest to you may find the request for such an intimate gift blushing or even offensive. Your TMI threshold is different from your Aunt Sylvia’s.

Meanwhile, for young married people who don’t know the words Wedgwood, Spode or Dalton and shudder at the prospect of envelopes of money, collecting digital “cash” gifts is easier than ever.

For his viral wedding, Martin experimented with gifts using a new free service called Lopay, but Venmo, Square and Zelle are also popular options.

There are also hundreds of competing registration sites to choose from and suit your needs (Zola, MyRegistery, Honeyfund, Giftful), each offering slightly different benefits. Sorry grandma, but you need to click the link, register, scroll, click, enter your card details and worry about shipping.

So, are there any rules to follow in this new Wild West wedding registry tedium? Thankfully, absolutely yes.

Don’t be greedy

Weddings can do strange things to otherwise well-intentioned people: turning them into selfish jerks.

“I had a bride who had her wedding at the Rainbow Room [at Rockefeller Center]it was so expensive,” Moya recalled. “She spent about $500 per guest, and she told everyone she expected them to give accordingly. This is a big “no”. The cost of your wedding is your choice, not your guest obligation. This is very annoying. “

If you organize a registry, it should have a variety of options and price points—and be aware that statistics show you only get about half of what you ask for.

Cash is still king

“People have very strong opinions about cash,” said Sara Margulis, chief executive of Honeymoon registry website Honeyfund. “But cash registers are growing in popularity, and now we’re seeing an entire generation of couples willing to throw a Venmo QR code on their wedding invitations, on the gift table, or in their car and drive off with the can.”

Even if you don’t like dealing with the cold stuff, zero-fee sites like Honeyfund make it easy to get paid – just be aware that many sites charge a commission.

Margulies advises against simply pooling money—it can make attendees feel like they’re paying to attend your wedding.

Let friends and family contribute to specific parts of the trip—like a vineyard adventure or a helicopter tour. The more creative the better. Margulis noted that one couple asked Italy for money for a full wheel of Parmesan cheese.

“When it comes to asking for cash, you want to do it in a way that makes the donor excited about the experience you’re going to have,” Margulis says.

Or, consider financing travel consultant fees because “honeymoons are more complicated than they used to be,” says Kate Lacroix, a travel consultant at Fora in Boulder, Colorado.

But Moya warns against acting like an influencer: being out of touch with reality doesn’t look good.

“Be humble,” she said. “Think about your guests. If they’ve never traveled and you ask them to pay to swim with dolphins, that might be a little uncomfortable.”

Keep it convenient

Prices for a good registry range from $20 to over $300, and items come from a variety of easily accessible stores. The goal is at least six.

But one thing couples using online registries rarely consider is where the items will physically be located and how they will receive them. Some guests will be happy to have their gifts shipped directly to your home, while others prefer to pick them up in-store or have them shipped to themselves for personal gifting.

“We found that 30% of items were purchased within two weeks of the wedding,” says Cono Onorato, founder of Giftful, a wish list and registry platform that allows you to hide gifts until after the wedding. “So there’s definitely a fair amount of people looking for last-minute items that they can go into Target and snap up.”

In fact, Giftful’s data scientists found that 20% of purchases were made on the day of the event and 5% were made on the day of the event.

“The reason some registry items go unclaimed is because they don’t arrive in time for the wedding,” Onorato said. “We create a successful registry because we know our guests will be picking up something on the way to the wedding.”

Resist your radicalism

Some couples already have it all, or just don’t like “the stuff.” So it’s no wonder that asking for a donation to a favorite charity in lieu of a gift has become so popular. It’s a beautiful sentiment and good intention, but your favorite cause may become someone else’s annoyance.

“Maybe you and your friends are passionate about a particular cause, but that might only make up 10 percent of your guests,” Moya says. “I don’t think it feels good to other people. Most people want to give you something.”

It goes without saying that your wedding is not a time for political posturing, but supporting even the most uncontroversial charitable network organization puts you at risk of being holier-than-thou (remember rule number one).

After all, if you were really the Charity Paladin you pretend to be, you’d be donating anonymously for the cause rather than for the glory.

“Just take the money,” Moya suggested. “Then you can do whatever you want.”