Is it Okay to Ask your Wedding Guests for Money?

We are so excited to share the most beautiful, polite and easy way of asking guests to contribute money as a wedding gift or towards your honeymoon! Better yet, it's done all online! 

It’s likely that you’ve been living with your fiancé for some time now, and you may already have everything you need at home to start your life together. But that doesn’t mean you couldn’t use some extra cash as a wedding-gift for that dream honeymoon escape, house deposit or the adventure of a lifetime, right?

Is asking family & friends for wedding cash seen as tacky, inappropriate, or even offensive?

Based on years of ABIA research, surveys, and asking the wedding pro’s, the simple truth is that your loved ones will want to give you some sort of gift at your wedding, so why not make it easy for them by signalling to them in a nice way that a cash contribution to your online wishing well would be very much appreciated.
 

How do you ask for Wedding Cash?

100% use an online wishing well!

Gone are the days of gift registries. It’s very much the norm to ask your guests for a cash contribution rather than a toaster, so don’t feel awkward. Your guests want to give you whatever will make you smile – even if that gift is cash. Because really, it’s not about the money, it’s about what it’s going toward.

Old-school gift registries aren’t made for today’s couple and that is exactly why ABIA highly recommends Hitchd (Founded in Australia)– it’s the simple and most beautiful way to setup your online wishing well.
Hitchd allows you to create an online wedding registry for just about anything you can imagine, from honeymoons to home improvement to cooking classes and everything in between.

You can even choose to donate to your favourite charity!

The best part? Hitchd ensures you receive heartfelt contributions straight to your bank. Guests can choose any amount of money to give, using all major credit cards. It’s simple, safe, and secure.
Creating a personalised wedding registry with Hitchd is so simple and beautiful by design that your wedding guests won’t hesitate to chip in.

How to Direct Guests to an Online Wishing Well?

When creating your online wishing well with Hitchd, you will receive a personalised link where you can direct your wedding-guests to contribute money to. E.g. www.hitchd.com/the-beckhams

You can add this link to your invitation or even your personalised wedding website.

They have so many template messages on how to politely ask your guests to leave a cash contribution. We really mean it when Hitchd is the best and easiest registry we have seen in the world!



 

How does Hitchd work?

After creating your account, you can create as many ‘gifts’ in your Hitchd registry.

For example, if you choose to create a Honeymoon Fund, you can add a ‘gift’ called ‘Flights to Byron Bay’, or a gift called ‘Snorkelling the Reef’. Then, guests can choose which ‘gift’ they contribute to.

If you want to simply have an online wishing well, you just need to create one gift called ‘Wishing Well’ and all guests contribute to this one ‘gift’

What’s even more special, is you can easily upload photos from Hitchd’s template library of what your gift is, e.g. a photo of the Maldives.

Your guests’ cash contributions will go directly to your bank, so we recommend creating a new bank account called “Wedding Guest Fund” to keep track of all the contributions coming through.

Hitch’d automatically sends thank you messages after the wedding date, which is a great touch!


 

Take the Thank You a Little Further!

Honeymoon & cash registries make for unique thank you card opportunities!

Let's say your cousin gifted you a white-water rafting adventure—how fun would it be to send an E-thankyou Card as a picture of you and your partner going downstream?

Including a photo is the perfect way to not only show the impact of their gift but to give them a glimpse into your once-in-a-lifetime trip, as well!

A wonderful feature of Hitchd is that it tracks all contributions made and allows you to personalise each individual thank you card or note.

Hitchd also provide a service where they turn your personalised message in to a beautiful handwritten thank you card to post in the mail! 
 

How much does a guest give a wedding couple?

The $100 question?!

The first thing to remember is that you’re not getting married to crowd source funds so you can pay for your holiday or home improvements. It’s very likely that you left a lovely line on your wedding website or registry that read something like; “While your presence is already a present in itself, if you wish to give us gifts, we’d like to request money as we are saving for our beautiful future together.”

So given the above, you cannot be disappointed, judgemental or annoyed if no money is forthcoming. What we do know however is that more than likely, you will receive something, so what’s normal?

Every guest that has ever attended a wedding since the dawn of time will invariably ponder the age-old question, “how much should I give”?

Usually when working out the answer there are a variety of factors at play, my relationship to the couple, distance travelled, how extravagant the wedding is likely to be (i.e., fancy dinner and drinks), how much can I afford to give etc etc.  

While there is no right or wrong answer, according to Hitchd, based on the average contribution, the safest minimum amount offered is $100 per person.

However, this amount can be adjusted based on your own financial situation. Don’t feel pressured to cough up a large sum when you’re in between jobs, or when you’re facing multiple wedding invitations in a short period of time. 



 

Start your online wishing well. Receive 20% off
Discount Code = HEY20