My fiance and "Honeyfund"

Angeles61

So, I lurk on this board all day long, every day. Pretty sure my fiance thinks I'm ridiculous.

 

Recently, he brought up something like "honeyfund", but I don't think that was the actual website he was talking about. I told him no way, that's rude, we will just have a small registry and people will get the hint. He basically said that I am letting The Knot dictate the wedding and that he will let me do most things my way, but he thinks not having a "donation website" or whatever you want to call it is silly. He seems pretty set in doing this - and I'm going to be super embarassed.

 

Ladies, since he is being stubborn, please do me a huge favor and do what you're best at - tell me all the reasons this is wrong so that I can make him read it.

Thanks in advance!

KeptInStitches

No one will ever tell him he's doing something wrong to his face. EVERYONE will talk about it behind his back for all time. And they'll rope you in right along with it.

And by the way, you're not letting TK dictate the wedding. You're letting good etiquette dictate your wedding, which is far less about using the right fork and far more about making sure your guests are comfortable.

Teddy917

Here's one reason that catches most people's attention: MONEY!!!! Let's say dear Aunt Gertrude decides to give you $100 because she knows you will use it for your trip to wherever. She is doesn't know about honeymoon registries but sees that you have one and thinks that instead of just giving you the $100, she will buy you a $100 couple's massage instead. Well you won't actually get the massage, you'll get a check minus a fee. So instead of just getting the $100 straight from Aunt Gertrude, you only get $75. Now which would your FI rather have?

mstallae

It is always rude to ask for money! (and in fact rude to specifically ask for gifts even!) It is assumed MOST people will give you a wedding gift. By creating a small registry and possibly having other people (WP, parents etc) spread by word of mouth that you are saving up for X you will likely get largely cash gifts.  If someone doesn't want to give cash (or any gift at all!) that is their choice and you need to be grateful for whatever you DO receive. 

RebeccaB88

My cousin (who is a sweet girl but kinda clueless on etiquette) registered for her entire destination elopement on Honeyfund.  Not just hotel rooms and rental car, but swimwear, flowers, and bottles of tequila. No one in the family ever said anything to her about how they felt about it, but we sure talked about it amongst ourselves, and none of us got her a gift either. That's how offensive we found it.  (Never mind that we received emails reminding us about the Honeyfund twice weekly for over two months and none of us were invited to the wedding...)

Ajuliana

@rebecca I'm sorry, but emailing for gifts when she didn't invite you? I don't know that I believe she's sweet or blissfully ignorant.

RebeccaB88

Ajuliana said:

@rebecca I'm sorry, but emailing for gifts when she didn't invite you? I don't know that I believe she's sweet or blissfully ignorant.

I'd go with her being both, actually. She just wouldn't 'get' why doing what she did isn't appropriate, so we didn't bother trying to explain. Her latest is that she's now begging for donations of furniture and household goods because she sold everything she owned to move to be with her husband, and *then* found out she couldn't work in that country, so they have to move back here and now they need to set up housekeeping. If she'd just had a regular registry I'd have gotten her a gift off that and maybe she wouldn't be in this position, but she didn't.

Ironically, her younger sister managed to pull off one of the most etiquette-appropriate weddings I've ever attended, despite a shoestring budget and a mother and sister who didn't think the Honeyfund thing was inappropriate at all.

SomethingBeautiful08

People are more then capable of giving you money without any sort of site dedicated to it.  Again the main two issues with Honeyfunds are the fees that others have explained and the "lying" aspect of it.  For example if I pay a company $100 to deliver a bottle of wine to your house, I expect that the bottle is actually given to you.  When you register for a platter and it is purchased, you expect to get a platter.  When you register for a honeyfund, you are registering for things that you never expect to get, likewise your friends are buying things that they expect you are getting, but you aren't. 

Simply Fated

Definitely point out to fiance that you won't be receiving the full amount the guest gives you.

Angeles61

Nicely done ladies, thank you. I didn't even think about fees/not getting what the guest paid for.

MairePoppy

tputman's fi, let's divide your guest list into three sections 

1. those, like me, who nearly always give cold, hard cash as a wedding gift. I buy a boxed gift from the couple's registry for the shower and $$ for the wedding.

2. those who never give cash because they don't necessarily want the couple to know how much they spent.

3. those who don't give wedding gifts. Their presence at your wedding is your present. They aren't violating any etiquette rules because a wedding invitation isn't an invoice.

Let's say half the first group decides to stick with the hard, cold cash. The other half thinks your honeymoon fund is cute and clever so they make a donation. 

Group number 2 isn't going to donate. They may even be offended so they decide to buy you either a gift from your registry or a useless item that you can't return ex: handmade crocheted toilet paper cover. Or they may have your gift monogrammed so you can't return it. Or they put you in their re-gifting program, by giving you a gift that they have received and didn't like.

You're not getting anything from Group 3.

At the end of the day, you have a few donations from the first group. The broker has deducted a little for a service fee. You still don't have enough to fund a honeymoon. WTH are you going to tell those guests who donated when you can't afford to go on the honeymoon that they think they paid for?

C'mon tputman's fi, I know you don't like to shop for wedding gifts and you think you're saving everyone some trouble by providing this convenient way of gifting you without leaving their homes. Some of your guy friends probably think it's great that you can ask for money for your wedding, but the majority of us know it's rude and tacky to ask people to give you money. We also know that most couples like to get money as a wedding gift. Most of the time, I want to make the couple happy. But if they start getting greedy, I'm getting out my crochet hook.

MoxieMickie

 

 

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KeptInStitches

@MairePoppy, totally off your point, but I would be more than honored (as one crafter to another) to get a handmade crocheted TP cover.

Blue_Bird

Since he's already decided that The Knot is dictating your life, I think he will ignore our advice anyway. My concern is the fact that he's dead set on doing something that you are clearly very uncomfortable with. Tell him why YOU think it's wrong and don't want to do it. I'd tell him that if he insists, you aren't going to attach your name to it.

itzMS

I recently ran across a blog post where a couple was featured "bragging" about how they saved soooo much money on their wedding. Okay, fine. If you're on a budget, you're on a budget. I was interested in seeing their cost-saving strategies...so I read on...

You get to the honeymoon section of the budget where the amount spent was "Free...paid for by guests through a honeymoon registry". 10 days in SAINT LUCIA. Not like a casual trip somewhere in the lower-48...but St. Lucia!!

So let's brag about how we cut costs and such, but then also brag about how we had our guests pay for our extravagant vacation.

Yeah...no.

AddieCake

We have friends who used a Honeymoon registry several years ago, and I thought it was brilliant. I happily bought them the "experience" from the site. Then I found TK and found out I had not bought them that experience. I had simply donated cash to them, and not even the amount I thought I had since the company took a cut. I think a lot of people don't understand how those things work and so they think they are a great idea until they find out the truth. 

grumbledore

MairePoppy said:

tputman's fi, let's divide your guest list into three sections 

1. those, like me, who nearly always give cold, hard cash as a wedding gift. I buy a boxed gift from the couple's registry for the shower and $$ for the wedding.

2. those who never give cash because they don't necessarily want the couple to know how much they spent.

3. those who don't give wedding gifts. Their presence at your wedding is your present. They aren't violating any etiquette rules because a wedding invitation isn't an invoice.

Let's say half the first group decides to stick with the hard, cold cash. The other half thinks your honeymoon fund is cute and clever so they make a donation. 

Group number 2 isn't going to donate. They may even be offended so they decide to buy you either a gift from your registry or a useless item that you can't return ex: handmade crocheted toilet paper cover. Or they may have your gift monogrammed so you can't return it. Or they put you in their re-gifting program, by giving you a gift that they have received and didn't like.

You're not getting anything from Group 3.

At the end of the day, you have a few donations from the first group. The broker has deducted a little for a service fee. You still don't have enough to fund a honeymoon. WTH are you going to tell those guests who donated when you can't afford to go on the honeymoon that they think they paid for?

C'mon tputman's fi, I know you don't like to shop for wedding gifts and you think you're saving everyone some trouble by providing this convenient way of gifting you without leaving their homes. Some of your guy friends probably think it's great that you can ask for money for your wedding, but the majority of us know it's rude and tacky to ask people to give you money. We also know that most couples like to get money as a wedding gift. Most of the time, I want to make the couple happy. But if they start getting greedy, I'm getting out my crochet hook.

The bolded is what I did when my friend did Honeyfund.  I was so skeeved by it that instead of my normal generous cash gift, I gave her something that cost in the $20 range and called it a day.  I love her but she did so many rude rude things relative to her wedding I almost lost my mind.