Bridezilla or cheapskates?: Bride’s text rant over wedding present offers lessons on minefield around gift-giving?
Bride’s rant over wedding present offers lessons on minefield around gift-giving | Canada | News | National Post
It was just an innocent hinged wicker gift basket, brimming with gourmet and “fun” pantry ingredients such as Sour Patch Kids and Marshmallow Fluff — a wedding present for a casual acquaintance in Hamilton, Ont. “Life is delicious,” they wrote on the tag. “Enjoy.”
But with the click of a ‘send’ button, the basket and bad feelings it conjured sparked international debate about the expectations on guests of modern day weddings and how to handle the social minefield around gift-giving. It also provided magnificent trainwreck.
First the newlyweds asked for the receipt, according to the Fluff-giving guests. Then, they received a text saying “I’m not sure if it’s the first wedding you have been to, but for your next wedding … People give envelopes. I lost out on $200 covering you and your dates plate … And got fluffy whip and sour patch kids in return.”
It exploded from there into the text-version of a screaming match — the newlyweds accused of having the “etiquette of a twig” and the guests chastised as the “laughing stock” of the wedding based on their unappreciated present. Eventually the guests went public to their local paper, the Hamilton Spectator, opening the nasty exchange up for careful analysis. The Post‘s Sarah Boesveld went to the experts and gleaned five lessons from this gift gaffe:
1. Don’t expect anything and you’ll never be disappointed
True in life, true at weddings. It is good etiquette to give a gift at a wedding, but that gift is entirely up to the giver, said Anna Post, author of Emily Post’s Etiquette 18th Edition and the manners icon’s great-great-granddaughter. Couples can ask for specifics, but the phrasing is really important, she said: ‘‘’Of course we would love whatever you give us, but what we can really use is X’” she said, adding that this should never appear on the invitation, just on a couple’s website or spread word of mouth. She calls the Hamilton example a “spectacular” gaffe-fest that incorporates so many etiquette faux pas it’s head-spinning.
2. Weddings are not money making ventures
Yes, they’re expensive for the happy couple and their families, but guests should never have to pay their way — at any event, etiquette experts say. Especially galling to Ms. Post is that the newlyweds said they “lost $200″ on the couple. “There’s this idea out there that your gift at a wedding is supposed to cover the cost of your dinner. This is completely bogus and utterly tacky,” she said.
3. But sometimes, they kind of are
Back in 1960, only 10% of couples lived together before marriage — today, 70% of couples set up house before tying the knot, said Hana Abaza, co-founder and CEO of centralized wedding registry website WeddingRepublic.com, where guests can put money towards things like home improvements and honeymoons. While “this level of rudeness was uncalled for,” she said, “cash is on the rise as a popular gift trend” and has been for awhile. “It partly explains the expectation. But I think what influences her reaction even more is the cultural thing.” The brides (the newlyweds are both women), have Croatian and Italian backgrounds — both cultures that have a strong tradition of cash wedding gifts. “North America is the exception, it’s not the rule,” she said. Even so, surely this couple knows that not everyone is aware of these cultural norms, she said.
4. For crying out loud, just say ‘thank you’
“You get a gift? You thank the gift giver and everyone moves on. It’s that simple,” said Karen Cleveland who writes the etiquette column Manners are Sexy. She’s glad this story came out because “now brides and couples everywhere have a study of precisely how not to behave.” The overwhelming public support for the gift givers shows people still appreciate the “spirit” in which the gift was given — the couple clearly wanted to give the newlyweds something they would enjoy. “That, at the base, is what’s important. How we got so far away from that? Damned if I know.”
5. Private text-fights can easily become very public, unflattering text-fights
To a wedding expert like Alison McGill, editor-in-chief of Wedding Bells magazine, the anxiety over gift-giving is nothing new — it’s always been a bit of a minefield of clashing expectations. What’s surprising is how a simple case of disappointment had to fully implode a perfectly fine acquaintanceship through a text and public airing, she said. “Thirty years ago you would have picked up the phone and it would have been a contained conversation, you might’ve told your friends about it … but you wouldn’t have it out there,” she said. But to Ms. Post, the only thing texting did was enable impulsivity. In her mind, “not one of these people should be allowed anywhere near a send button.”
Bride’s rant over wedding present offers lessons on minefield around gift-giving | Canada | News | National Post
It was just an innocent hinged wicker gift basket, brimming with gourmet and “fun” pantry ingredients such as Sour Patch Kids and Marshmallow Fluff — a wedding present for a casual acquaintance in Hamilton, Ont. “Life is delicious,” they wrote on the tag. “Enjoy.”
But with the click of a ‘send’ button, the basket and bad feelings it conjured sparked international debate about the expectations on guests of modern day weddings and how to handle the social minefield around gift-giving. It also provided magnificent trainwreck.
First the newlyweds asked for the receipt, according to the Fluff-giving guests. Then, they received a text saying “I’m not sure if it’s the first wedding you have been to, but for your next wedding … People give envelopes. I lost out on $200 covering you and your dates plate … And got fluffy whip and sour patch kids in return.”
It exploded from there into the text-version of a screaming match — the newlyweds accused of having the “etiquette of a twig” and the guests chastised as the “laughing stock” of the wedding based on their unappreciated present. Eventually the guests went public to their local paper, the Hamilton Spectator, opening the nasty exchange up for careful analysis. The Post‘s Sarah Boesveld went to the experts and gleaned five lessons from this gift gaffe:
1. Don’t expect anything and you’ll never be disappointed
True in life, true at weddings. It is good etiquette to give a gift at a wedding, but that gift is entirely up to the giver, said Anna Post, author of Emily Post’s Etiquette 18th Edition and the manners icon’s great-great-granddaughter. Couples can ask for specifics, but the phrasing is really important, she said: ‘‘’Of course we would love whatever you give us, but what we can really use is X’” she said, adding that this should never appear on the invitation, just on a couple’s website or spread word of mouth. She calls the Hamilton example a “spectacular” gaffe-fest that incorporates so many etiquette faux pas it’s head-spinning.
2. Weddings are not money making ventures
Yes, they’re expensive for the happy couple and their families, but guests should never have to pay their way — at any event, etiquette experts say. Especially galling to Ms. Post is that the newlyweds said they “lost $200″ on the couple. “There’s this idea out there that your gift at a wedding is supposed to cover the cost of your dinner. This is completely bogus and utterly tacky,” she said.
3. But sometimes, they kind of are
Back in 1960, only 10% of couples lived together before marriage — today, 70% of couples set up house before tying the knot, said Hana Abaza, co-founder and CEO of centralized wedding registry website WeddingRepublic.com, where guests can put money towards things like home improvements and honeymoons. While “this level of rudeness was uncalled for,” she said, “cash is on the rise as a popular gift trend” and has been for awhile. “It partly explains the expectation. But I think what influences her reaction even more is the cultural thing.” The brides (the newlyweds are both women), have Croatian and Italian backgrounds — both cultures that have a strong tradition of cash wedding gifts. “North America is the exception, it’s not the rule,” she said. Even so, surely this couple knows that not everyone is aware of these cultural norms, she said.
4. For crying out loud, just say ‘thank you’
“You get a gift? You thank the gift giver and everyone moves on. It’s that simple,” said Karen Cleveland who writes the etiquette column Manners are Sexy. She’s glad this story came out because “now brides and couples everywhere have a study of precisely how not to behave.” The overwhelming public support for the gift givers shows people still appreciate the “spirit” in which the gift was given — the couple clearly wanted to give the newlyweds something they would enjoy. “That, at the base, is what’s important. How we got so far away from that? Damned if I know.”
5. Private text-fights can easily become very public, unflattering text-fights
To a wedding expert like Alison McGill, editor-in-chief of Wedding Bells magazine, the anxiety over gift-giving is nothing new — it’s always been a bit of a minefield of clashing expectations. What’s surprising is how a simple case of disappointment had to fully implode a perfectly fine acquaintanceship through a text and public airing, she said. “Thirty years ago you would have picked up the phone and it would have been a contained conversation, you might’ve told your friends about it … but you wouldn’t have it out there,” she said. But to Ms. Post, the only thing texting did was enable impulsivity. In her mind, “not one of these people should be allowed anywhere near a send button.”
