With no wedding gift received, it's a lose-lose situation for both parties. If they were never planning on sending you one, it's a nice gesture of appreciation for a friend or family member who chose to celebrate your love. If they forgot to get you a gift in the first place, it serves as a reminder. A fairly classy way around the situation is to send a thank-you note anyway, just for coming. It's fairly petty to even be thinking about (although it definitely stings) and there's no situation where you look good asking one of your guests if they plan to give you a gift after the fact, even if they did go crazy on the open bar. When did people stop giving wedding gifts by default and what can you do about it? That felt like a really big number, but when I asked around to friends who have gotten married recently, they said they had a similar experience. That said, it's pretty standard for guests to buy a present when they attend a wedding, especially when they know the hosts are spending a lot of money per person to throw the event in the first place.Ĭonventional wisdom says that guests have a year after the wedding to give you a gift, but do people really remember to send something months after the big day? We were shocked to discover that when our wedding weekend was over, there was no wedding gift received from almost 20 percent of our guests. Our guests spent their time and money to come celebrate with us and we were grateful for their effort, even if there was no wedding gift received. It led to a perplexing post-wedding dilemma: what do you do when there's no wedding gift received?įirst of all, it's important to note that a gift is obviously not a requirement of attending a wedding. One thing we were completely surprised by at our wedding was the number of guests that didn't give us a gift. You'll roll with the punches, but the surprises truly add up. The pasta's going to have a different sauce than you agreed on with your caterer, your Aunt Millie is going to show up in a wheelchair out of nowhere and suddenly need a ramp (didn't she run a 5K last week?), and the DJ's going to play songs that you know for a fact were on your do-not-play list. You can plan every detail down to the millisecond and things are still going to surprise you. It's impossible to know what to expect during your wedding.