Advanced options
There is no cover-your-plate rule in the UK: that's imported folklore: nobody invites you to break even, and the couple will never know or compute your per-head catering share. Give within your means: the guest who travelled, booked a hotel and bought an outfit has ALREADY spent heavily on the couple (attendance-cost pages on this site put a full wedding day at GBP 300-500 per guest): a modest gift on top of real attendance costs is fully proper, and skint guests giving GBP 20 with a warm card are doing it right.
What The Wedding Gift Amount Calculator Works Out
- Suggested gift: a relationship band (GBP 30 for colleagues and distant relatives, GBP 50 for friends and cousins, GBP 85 for close friends, GBP 150 and up for immediate family) scaled for attendance (70% for evening guests, 60% for warm non-attenders) and for who is giving (a couple gives about 1.7x one person, a family with children about 2x), rounded to GBP 5. It is a suggestion, not a rule.
- The etiquette actually in force: give within your means; cash or a transfer to a honeymoon fund is now normal and usually preferred; follow the couple's stated ask, and take "no gifts" at its word. Nobody remembers amounts, everyone remembers absences and warmth.
- Formats and edge cases: transfers with a reference so they know it was you, cash in a card handed over on the day rather than posted, vouchers only where the couple named the shop; destination weddings scale down hard because the travel is most of the gift, second marriages run smaller and warmer, and a gift list is a set of suggestions too.
- No cover-your-plate rule: it is imported folklore. Nobody invites you to break even and no couple computes per-head catering against envelopes. A full wedding day already costs a guest GBP 300 to GBP 500 in travel, hotel and outfit, so a modest gift on top is fully proper and GBP 20 with a warm card from a skint guest is doing it right.
- Type of wedding and your role (advanced): a destination wedding halves the suggestion, a second marriage takes a quarter off, and being in the wedding party (your time, your outfit, your hen or stag spend) takes 30% off. Changing these changes the headline suggestion.
- Rounding and budget cap (advanced): round to GBP 10 or GBP 25 for a tidier figure, and set a cap that the suggestion will never exceed, because the budget is the real rule.
- What attending already costs you (advanced): travel, hotel and outfit. The total-cost card adds it to the gift and the share card shows the gift as a percentage of everything you are spending on the couple.
- Weddings this year (advanced): multiplies the gift (and the total including attendance) by the number of invitations, which is the figure that explains why a summer of weddings needs its own sinking fund.
- Before any cap or scaling (advanced): the plain basic-mode suggestion, kept visible so you can see what the advanced adjustments changed.