Attending a Wedding? Economical Wedding Gifts and Other Hacks to Save Money

Here Comes The Bride. AND Here Come The Bills! How to enjoy summer weddings, and survive the wedding expense blues, without going broke.

The wedding season is here. Your mailbox is bulging with invitations; your calendar is already littered with save-the-dates, and the biggest workout in your future is for your credit card.

Weddings are expensive and not just for the bride and groom. But weddings are also such special events – everyone is unique.

If you are invited to a wedding of three this summer, you face the challenge of finding ways to cover all of the extra expenses of attending the event or the difficult decision of declining the invite.

In 2015, American Express Spending & Saving Tracker estimated the cost of attending a wedding at $673.  This was up 14% from the year before, so you can assume the typical wedding expenses, for each attendee, will easily exceed $700 today. (Here’s a cool budgeting tip: if you don’t know how much something will cost, first try googling it.)

If you are in the wedding party, you will go through even more cash. And if you have multiple ceremonies to attend, the math gets scary!

Short of boycotting the whole notion of weddings and begging your friends to elope, you need a few wedding hacks to keep some of the expenses under control as a guest. So here are five proven tips for celebrating their big day, get your shot at catching the bouquet, and all without going broke:

5 Wedding Hacks to Not Go Broke

1. Find Yourself Something Borrowed, Something Blue…

Before you drop a couple of hundred bucks on a new dress (and potentially even more on shoes), consider borrowing a dress or shoes from a friend.

You have a friend who attended a wedding last summer, guaranteed – ask to take her dress for the weekend. Message your friends who might have something that fits and ask to wear it to the wedding. Offer them one of yours for a party or wedding they plan to go to. You both win.

2. Be Clever When Buying Their Gift

We’ll cover this thorny problem in more detail below, but you already know that the gift for the groom and bride tends to be a major chunk of the typical wedding expenses for a guest. Breathe a sigh of relief if you’re invited to a “your presence is our present” wedding and don’t sweat it. If, however, you are attending a wedding with multiple links to places to buy the items for their new home, start looking for wedding hacks.

Do you have store credit at any of the places they are registered at? Do you have store credit or gift cards at a store where you could purchase a similar item? (A 9”x13” glass dish is a 9”x13” glass dish whether it comes from Target or Macy’s.) Could you and a friend go in on a larger item where your half is less than what you’d spend buying a gift solo?

Don’t see any way around buying their gift full price – can you purchase it through a charitable site like Amazon Smile where a portion of your purchase price goes to a charity of your choice? The happy couple gets the perfect sheet set and you help dig wells in Africa – that’s not all bad.

How expensive should a wedding gift be? A memorable one is pricey, but potentially something that will remind them of you for years to come. We love using our Mickey Waffle Iron and every time we do, we think of Tracie.

3. Pinch Pennies to Get There

Online weddings haven’t really taken off, meaning that attending one means getting from A to B. The American Express survey also noted that the largest part of guests’ typical wedding expenses will be airfare, with hotel expenses closely behind.

Do you have any forgotten frequent flier miles? Do you have points from a credit card? Is there a less expensive airport to fly in and out of? Is it cheaper to add together two one-way fares versus a round-trip? How much would it cost to drive there?

We were surprised to discover when flying our friends’ San Francisco wedding we could save several hundred dollars by flying in and out of Oakland International Airport instead of San Francisco International Airport. Our drive to the hotel was 50 minutes instead of 40 minutes – totally worth it.

Can you turn your travel into a “girls trip” and make plans with some other friends attending the wedding? Then your airfare essentially pays for two trips instead of one. Plus you can split the hotel expense.

4. Don’t Lose Cash en Route

Another typical wedding expense item we often forget is the time away from our work required to attend the events.

If you have to miss work, could you arrange to be paid for work you do remotely for those few days? Sitting in the airport two hours before your flight could be the time you log in and earn some money. If you have work that can be completed during the flight can you log those hours with your boss and not miss out on getting paid? Is there time between events you could work on something? Is there an opportunity for any overtime before or after your trip?

Anticipate that potential loss of income and see what you can do to alleviate that.

5. Consider – Carefully – Declining the Invite

A final option to consider is deciding that you just can’t attend the wedding. You can be happy for the couple and love and support them without being around the day they get hitched.

Just remember they want you there or they wouldn’t have added you to the guest list they pared down, so proceed with sensitivity. They can’t possibly imagine being anywhere else on that day, so you may need to anticipate some hurt feelings. Consider your relationship, and the future of your relationship, before you decline the invitation. Brides.com offers some good advice and things to consider before you say “no”.

If you do decline the invitation, do so promptly. Don’t wait to deliver the “bad news” or you are creating more stress on the couple’s end. Send a handwritten note along with the reply card very briefly explaining your inability to attend, along with a wish for a wonderful future.

It is hard to comprehend right now, but there will be a season of your life where you go years without a wedding invitation. You hit a phase where ages, life stages, etc. mean zero wedding invites, so take a deep breath now and know you won’t be bombarded with wedding invitations like this forever.

How Expensive Should a Wedding Gift Be?

Chances are, you’re already browsing Pinterest and Instagram to find the perfect item to help your friends commemorate their special day. An economical wedding gift, you may be thinking, just won’t cut it. With all the other typical wedding expenses for attendees coming at you fast and furious, though, getting them something decorated with diamonds may just not be on the cards. Also, you and your spouse agree on that gift amount. Let’s not forget the other important union – of your opinions.

Business Insider says that the average amount spent on a wedding gift is $200. As we’ve seen, a wedding guest already spends an average of over $800 to attend a wedding. That includes far more than your gift: the travel, your outfit, your accommodations, etc.  With 13% of all marriages occurring in the month of June, you may be looking at an expensive summer.

Consider – with your spouse – these three questions when deciding how expensive a wedding gift should be.

1. How Much Should You Spend?

So much thought goes into selecting the perfect gift for the happy couple, but for your pocketbook’s sake, you and your partner need to focus on spending the appropriate amount.

Start by considering how close you are to the couple, how often you see them, and what you feel is appropriate. If you know the couple through work, or you’re vaguely friends, spend between $50 and $75 on a gift. We feel $50 is the least you should spend on an economical wedding gift. so no less than $50.

From that baseline, you hop up to the next tier, “mid-level friends”. Try to keep that gift within the $75-$100 range. With your close friends or family, look for something on the registry between $100 to $150.

Combining funds with another family or friends or coworkers on a more expensive gift is a good idea. This helps the couple get some of the larger things on the registry.

In just giving cash or a check, there are some different schools of thought. Megan enjoyed receiving cash and checks when we got married in 2007. While I preferred an actual gift. It seemed more personal to me, but Meg (not surprising for a Security Seeker) found the cash practical and awesome. Your Money Personality (and your spouses) will greatly affect how much you feel comfortable giving as a wedding gift.

2. You Can’t Take It with You

Modern marriage and weddings are changing in a variety of ways. Just think of the average ages of the bride and groom, or food trends (cupcakes instead of cake, anyone?), to how you’re supposed to give your gift to the happy couple.

With today’s world of Amazon Prime and online shopping – it is commonplace now for the gift to be delivered to their future home. It appears people no longer bring gifts to the ceremony and reception. In fact, the wedding gift tables look oddly bare.

Another gift-giving “rule” that changed is that, 15 years ago, it was fine for gifts to be delivered within a year. Nowadays, the timeframe is two months. So ensure your gifts are getting where they need to be shipped as soon after (or even before) the wedding as possible.

3. Make Sure Your Spouse Says: “I Do” (to the Gift Amount)

In the discussion of what to wear, how you’ll be getting to the venue, and when to tell the babysitter to come, make sure that you discuss the pricing of the gift with your spouse. It’s so important that you both understand and agree with what the gift will be costing you, so you don’t have strife on the day of the wedding or while shopping for your gift. Don’t let their happiest day be one of frustration and annoyance for you.

We know one couple that got in a huge fight on the way to a wedding because he felt his wife had spent too much on something that caught her eye, while he was hoping to get a more economical wedding gift. They arrived at the ceremony mad and had a horrible time while they were there because they didn’t communicate about the money beforehand.

Enjoy the season of weddings. Give your spouse’s hand a squeeze when the new couple says their vows. Remind your honey you’d marry them all over again.  Avoid those pesky fights about money by discussing the amount you’ll spend on a gift and ensuring the gift is delivered correctly.

Agree on the amount and then enjoy blessing a new couple starting out.

Enjoy your friends. Celebrate together. Mark these life-changing events in the presence of family and friends. And applaud yourself for doing all those things and not going broke in the process.

Eat. Drink. And be married!  Got any more tips to share or questions?  Let us know in the comments below.

As always,

Taylor & Megan Kovar

The Money Couple