[DoubleF]

Losing a friend or starting drama over $100 ish on a wedding gift is stupid.

Also, having a $100 ish average per head expectation is different to expecting everyone giving $100+. My wife and I also resolved that we'd "return the favor" somehow for friends that traveled AND gave monetary/other gifts. We had no $0 givers, but those that were low amounts we felt were justified. A few random cheques we frowned for only a moment as we felt the individual could have perhaps at least hit the $100 mark due to the embarrassing crap they were pulling at our wedding (Drama fun stuffs). But we're seriously talking $25 buck differences etc.


Random tip, ask attendees to write legal "real" names on the cheques. We ran into an issue where my wife had not yet changed her last name (and wasn't intending to change it legally immediately to reduce the random things that needed to be done), but attendees wrote my last name on it as perhaps a joke. Luckily, my 'proper' name was on it too and we were able to bypass some stupid over the top verification protocol by using my name and depositing it into a joint account vs having to go back and requesting a new cheque. It was only for about $150 ish in cheques that this occurred. Took an extra hour to resolve for what usually is a 5 minute bank visit.

IIRC, we even shredded a few cheques from friends because we felt their overall contribution to the day and other gifts received were more than generous that an additional cash gift wasn't necessary.

I also forget what the amount and time limit is, but my wife and I also split the cash deposits to avoid the whatever money laundering forms etc. we potentially would have to fill in for cash deposits. IIRC I believe the bank advised us to do this. We were only over by a few hundred over the threshold over the amount we hoped to deposit.


I guess a huge part of it is attitude/self fulfilling prophecy. If you run the day and time afterwards happily, it will be happy. If you're sour, dour and frumpy, it will affect how your remember the whole ordeal as well.

Oh... and the wedding was a blur. It's literally sensation overload. Get lots of pics, videos etc. to show the bride and groom afterwards. They'll miss a lot of it staring into each other's eyes (I know from experience).