Dear Prudence,
Is it tacky to ask for somewhat expensive gifts when you are not throwing an expensive wedding? My fiancé and I do a lot of volunteer work. Because of that, we’ve made some connections with people that are gracious enough to donate materials or time to the wedding.
We are having a wedding in the spring in a community garden center. It’s in a beautiful Victorian-style mansion that was donated to the organization. Most of the beautiful flowers will be in full bloom during that time. Our taste is a bit more casual and we love the architectural details of the house so much that we’ve decided to have very minimal decorations. I’m getting married in a regular dress I bought right before the pandemic but haven’t been able to wear. My fiancé has his outfit. Instead of paying for the food, we’ve basically been donating a ton of time to help in the vegetable and herb gardens. Some of that food is getting dried or pickled and will be used in our wedding dishes. We will hopefully have some crops that we will get in the spring as well. Because of all of this, we are paying very, very, little, like in the low thousands.
Well, fast forward to last weekend when my family figured out just how little we were paying for the wedding. My fiancé and I decided to make sure we put our registry up before the holidays in case anybody wanted to shop early and get some deals. That brought up the topic of the wedding. My family kept asking me about which vendors we were using and how we were decorating. After the twentieth time of me telling them that I wasn’t doing X with my wedding, it finally dawned on them that we were spending very little. Some of them kept telling me it was tacky for me to put such expensive stuff on our registry when we weren’t spending much on the wedding. Our registry isn’t that extensive, but it has very few things below the $30 range because my fiancé and I have been living together for a while. There were some big-ticket items on there that we honestly just expected people to buy as a group. The food and ambiance are going to be amazing, but a bit more casual. Is it an etiquette faux pas to ask for “expensive” gifts when you’re not spending money on the wedding?
—Tacky Wedding Planner