How did you spend your cash wedding gifts?

kvruns · May 2015

Just curious on how you spent the cash wedding gifts you received. Did you use it to "pay yourself back" for wedding or honeymoon expenses? Earmark it for a down payment on a house, big purchase, or perhaps another vacation? Or just put it in the bank for a rainy day?

I'm notorious for just putting money in the bank for a rainy day, but I feel like the wedding gifts we may receive should go for more than just buying groceries or gas in the car. Paying ourselves back for the wedding/honeymoon doesn't seem quite right, and we don't have any big purchases on the horizon so I'm thinking maybe earmark it for a vacation in the fall as we've already talked about going to NYC around Christmas or maybe somewhere warm in the fall.

How did you use yours?

Disclaimer: I know wedding gifts are not required, not expected, but I imagine we will receive cash gifts, especially since we do not have a registry

ashley8918 · May 2015

We paid our bills (mortgage, electric, cable, etc.)

KatWAG · May 2015

We spent 10% on a "second" honeymoon, a long weekend in Nashville.

The rest was put into savings and was eventually used on purchasing/ renovating a new house.

dolewhipper · May 2015

Honeymoon and paying down/paying off credit cards.

ETA: If we had any left over, we put it in the savings.

melbenso · May 2015

We bought a few items off of our registry with our completion discount, paid for our honeymoon, and saved the rest to put towards buying a house.

climbingsingle · May 2015

We used some as spending money on the HM. We also put some towards the taxes, the mortgage and redoing the master bath. We still have a little bit left that's sitting in our savings account.

sarawifenow · May 2015

Bills. We are boring.

vegasbaby2015 · May 2015

We spent some on a new camera for the honeymoon!

littlemushroom · May 2015

We put some towards our honeymoon and the rest went in our two joint savings accounts. One savings account is our vacation fund, which we are using for a cruise this September. The other savings account started as just general savings, but is now our house fund. We are using it for closing costs and all the various expenses associated with getting a house, like inspections, locksmith, movers, etc. We also used the gift cards we received for new pots and pans and a new grill that was desperately needed.

thisismynickname2 · May 2015

Since we didn't live together long before getting married, we put our cash gifts in our newly created joint checking account. We paid the final installment to the photographer using it and also used it to pay for the parts of the honeymoon that had not been pre-paid (i.e. airport transport and food).

The rest is just sitting there, so kind of considered savings.

blabla89 · May 2015

We'll use some of it on things for the house. The rest will probably just go into savings. I might ask DH if we can earmark it for a trip next year when we have vacation days to use.

LakeR2014 · May 2015

Spending money on honeymoon, paying off credit card debt, and whatever was left went towards savings to buy a house.

lyndausvi · May 2015

We spent some of the HM. Things like a special dinner or excursion we were not planning on doing.

We bought a beautiful hand-carved African drum on our HM. I think we paid about $200 for the drum. We were still traveling so we asked them to ship the drum to us. They didn't have the exact cost by the time we live. NBD. When we got home the credit card bill was waiting. The shipping charge was $750.

YIKES. We are always joking about our $950 HM drum.

We also bought a few things off the registry, then the rest went into savings.

labro · May 2015

Most of our cash gifts went in to savings. We took a little bit out as "free" spending money - I think $100 each to go do whatever we wanted with. We also bought a super high powered blower for the lawn/yardwork (loling at homeowner priorities) and a large buffet piece for our dining room to store all of our new crystal and barware in.

LakeR2014 · May 2015

double post - sorry.

cupcait927 · May 2015

We bought a brand new TV and also purchased some things off of our registry that we didn't get but really wanted. We put the rest into savings and used it slowly on things that needed replacing/updating around our house. We also used a little on our mini-moon.

banana468 · May 2015

We paid of DH's student loans with it. It wasn't glamorous but it seemed silly to spend more money while being in debt.

luckya23 · May 2015

We haven't had our wedding yet, but we're hoping for a deck and then a hot tub!

emmaaa · May 2015

Some was spent on bills, some during the HM, and some buying registry items.

hellosweetie1015 · May 2015

If we get any, it'll go to getting a new apartment set up. I doubt it would be much, but if we got $500 we could set up a pretty nice apartment between what we have and what we get. Most of my stuff won't be moving with us; my parents still haven't replaced a lot of their day-to-day kitcheny stuff and since I have a lot of utensils and stuff, I doubt they will.

sarahufl · May 2015

We just put it in checking/savings. Probably spent it on the honeymoon, but we didn't earmark it for anything.

ashley8918 · May 2015

Oh, and we also loaned a pretty large portion of it to my mom.

jenna8984 · May 2015

All of it went into savings for the new house/ closing costs.

vikinganna87 · May 2015

Right around the time we got married we bought a house from 1740. The initial purchase price wasn't that significant, but we're spending almost as much in rebuilding/renovating it. So our wedding money went straight to the house fund.

@kvruns If I were you I'd set aside at least a portion of the gift money you got for vacation in the fall or a Christmas trip to NYC. Vacations are usually worth it -- rarely something you regret.

Bubblegum5586 · May 2015

We used ours towards teh down payment of our house!

luckya23 · May 2015

vikinganna87 said:
Right around the time we got married we bought a house from 1740. The initial purchase price wasn't that significant, but we're spending almost as much in rebuilding/renovating it. So our wedding money went straight to the house fund.
@kvruns If I were you I'd set aside at least a portion of the gift money you got for vacation in the fall or a Christmas trip to NYC. Vacations are usually worth it -- rarely something you regret.

Wow!!

redheadbride15 · May 2015

We didn't register in the hope that people who choose to give gifts will give cash. We really, really don't need or want any stuff! But, we do need help building savings for a house down-payment and paying off student loans, so that's where the money will go.

huskypuppy14 · May 2015

We bought our house 2 weeks before our wedding, so we just put the money back to replenish some of our savings.

None of the money was earmarked for anything specific, but I bought a few things off the registry, and we bought a bunch of stuff for the house (furniture, TV, patio set, grill, lawnmower, etc).

tcnoble · May 2015

We took some of it on the honeymoon for tips/excursions - we had already paid for our honeymoon in full, not going in to debt for it.

We bought a 70" tv and entertainment center - all of our furniture is hand-me-downs so we decided to splurge and get ourselves something new... and we wanted something we could enjoy together. We had also purchased some of the things off our registry that we hadn't received but really wanted.

We put the rest in our (new) joint savings account.

wandajune6 · May 2015

We had a few unexpected non-wedding expenses come up right before the wedding so we needed to dig into our savings a bit for the wedding. We used our wedding money to replenish that and put the rest into savings. It was earmarked for house emergencies but most of it has already gone to taking care of MIL.

theartistformerlyknownas · May 2015

They went back into savings to replenish what we'd spent on the wedding. Some was spent on the honeymoon, the rest was earmarked toward a down payment but we ended up making enough off our old house to cover that, so now it'll go toward the kitchen remodel. It's not split out though like "this is the wedding money and it shall pay for (blank)." It's just... our savings. It's "getting our new life together started" like I think wedding gifts are intended.

How did you spend your cash wedding gifts?

Re: How did you spend your cash wedding gifts?

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