My husband and I have an interesting family situation. His sister is getting married soon and he is really struggling on what to give her as a gift. Here is a little background on our situation.
My husband and I were married about a year and a half ago. We are both professionals with stable careers. We had a 200+ person wedding at a country club, we paid about 75% of the cost and my parents picked up the remaining 25% (mainly because they invited a bunch of people we did not know). We tried to keep his family included, his brother was the best man and I asked his sister to be a bridesmaid. His parents made negative comments the whole time telling us how we were wasting our money, but we did our best to keep them informed and gave them the ability to invite as many people as they wanted without question. The wedding day came and went and it was everything we both could have dreamed of and more!
Upon return from our honeymoon were learned of 2 things. First we found out on Facebook his younger sister was engaged to her child's father, a man that she has been on and off with for the course of the child's life (about 3 years). Second his parents opted to give us a card with an IOU as a wedding gift. I know wedding gifts are not mandatory and should not be expected, but the gesture had taken us both by surprise.
His sister and fiance have been living at the fiance's parents house for the past year and a half because they cannot afford to live on their own. They don't seem to have a plan to leave anytime soon and they are planning a wedding way out of their means. His mom has called complaining that they have to pay more because they signed a contract guaranteeing a certain number of people and fell short about 40 guests. The immaturity of this couple blows my mind! Especially with a child involved. The fiance has also been borderline verbally abusive belittling her on social media and in front of family members several times. He has admitted to my brother-in-law he doesn't even love his sister! At the end of the day these two just want to throw a big party.
With all of that being said, my husband loves his sister even though they have grown apart. He wants to give her something nice despite the circumstances. Under normal circumstances we give a monetary gift, however given the lack of maturity of these two he fears what will happen with the money. We were going to give them a little mini-moon so they could have a weekend away, but they are already doing something for the wedding weekend. My husband also thought about giving them an IOU stating we would pay to help them move into their own place, but I feel this is tacky and I know how this made me feel when his parents did it to us. Many people have advised me to just give what we would normally give as a wedding guest and leave it at that. Does anyone one have any suggestions?