Wedding Invitation - "No Boxed Gifts"

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP,

Decline the invitation.

The average cost of an Indian wedding in the US is 100K. If this is an South Asian wedding, it will be a beyond lavish affair with at least a few hundred guests.

You and your gift will not be missed. Trust me on this.

Are you serious? Is this among the more wealthy Indians? Who pays for the wedding?

Perhaps this explains why they ask for cash as gifts. There are PPs' who said cash gifts went towards the down payment on a house or paying off student loans. Would it not make more sense to spend less on the wedding and use the funds towards a down payment or other such purpose?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP here: they are South Asian and I work with one of the parents and we do socialize to some extent. The parents are immigrants but their son was born and raised in the US. He is as Americanized as can be which is why the "no boxed gifts" qualification surprised us.

Never had to deal with this situation before. We'd like to attend the wedding - it would seem odd not to attend because of what may be a cultural quirk for all I know.

Is this normal in the South Asian community? It is a large wedding and they are expecting over 500 people to attend.

I can't speak for the whole South Asian community, but yes this is absolutely normal in my family's region of India and it is not considered impolite in the slightest. Even if the son is (or appears to be) "Americanized," much of the wedding may be organized by and for the family who are not.

I didn't want to put it on my own invitations but extended family said it would be bad not to--we were marrying in India and could not have transported boxed gifts back.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP here: they are South Asian and I work with one of the parents and we do socialize to some extent. The parents are immigrants but their son was born and raised in the US. He is as Americanized as can be which is why the "no boxed gifts" qualification surprised us.

Never had to deal with this situation before. We'd like to attend the wedding - it would seem odd not to attend because of what may be a cultural quirk for all I know.

Is this normal in the South Asian community? It is a large wedding and they are expecting over 500 people to attend.

I can't speak for the whole South Asian community, but yes this is absolutely normal in my family's region of India and it is not considered impolite in the slightest. Even if the son is (or appears to be) "Americanized," much of the wedding may be organized by and for the family who are not.

I didn't want to put it on my own invitations but extended family said it would be bad not to--we were marrying in India and could not have transported boxed gifts back.

Continued...I wonder what you mean by "Americanized." I probably seem "Americanized" to people at my parents' workplace (or even people at my own workplace) who don't know me well or see me outside work, but I speak my parents' language fluently, grew up speaking it at home, married a dude from India, and had a full Hindu ceremony when I married.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This thread is not making South Asian cultures look good at all.

Whatever. Take a post off of DCUM and decide that South Asian cultures are horrible from it. Typical. Like your culture is all roses right?



To the OP- If you don't want to give a gift, don't. Stating no boxed gifts simply means that if you want to give the couple a gift then instead of spending on some stupid registry gift, please give them the cash instead and allow them to use it as they need to benefit them.

To you all stating that this is not Asia, I'm sure the couple and their family are aware of that obvious fact. The majority of the attendants to the wedding will be South Asian.

South Asian weddings are LARGE, no one wants 500 boxes of any kind of gift. Cash is the POLITE gift to give to a new couple starting their life together. We don't know their circumstances, we don't know if they need a toaster, if they need money for a downpayment for a house, or if they would like to use their gifts to pay down any student loans so they don't start life together with a debt.

In American culture, gifts are polite. If you like it, keep it, if you don't then donate it. But that is seen as extremely wasteful in India. What holds value is cash and gold. Those are the gifts given to a new couple or at a baby's birth, etc. because they mean a lot more for the well being of the family.


Registries for gifts or towards a honeymoon are TACKY. I mean, really, I've seen some things like " hey help us enjoy our honeymoon by paying for a snorkel trip". Gross. How about I give you some money and you go buy your own snorkel package or your own set of dishes. Why do I have to go shopping around for you when you are perfectly capable of shopping for yourself.

But you can not put nothing at all on the card. Guest want to know what to get, it's a lot more stressful for them to just have to randomly pick up a gift of for a new couple. So either a registry or "no boxed gifts" needs to be listed.

My husband and I are both South Asian, but newsflash DCUM, it's not a monolith. We did two different invitations- for my side and my husband's side. "No boxed gifts" on mine, nothing on his, since "no boxed gifts" would have been taboo in his family and like I said registries are tacky. My MIL was inundated with calls about what to buy us as a gift.

The checks from my side gave us a very nice cushion to start out with- the remainder my student loans paid off, the rest into a Vanguard account that's been growing money for the past 15 years.

Lot of sweeping generalizations here ....... and I certainly agree with the PP who wrote that paying your college debt is the farthest thing from my mind when I give a wedding gift. What is next? Pay-off credit card bills?

Like I said- it's giving a cushion to a new couple to use as would best serve them. Once it's given, it's given. It's not a go fund me for credit card bill or honeymoons.

As stated earlier, it would give most South Asians gift givers pleasure knowing that they were able to help in some small way to the financial security for a new couple.

We are very community oriented. Giving cash and gold serves the most stability for a family in the long term. This trickles down to a stronger community and more stabile future generations.

It's something that you will not get unless you get out of your box and try to understand that cultures are different.

Please just don't give a gift if you're so offended or just don't go to the wedding at all. It's different for you and apparently differences make you uncomfortable.
It's an invite, feel free to decline.

Exactly - cash and gold are given when the people involved are from POOR OR ECONOMICALLY DISADVANTAGED backgrounds or cultures because everyone worries about money and financial secuity above all else. That is the accurate explanation that hopefully will end this debate. Giving cash is retalated to social class, in ANY CULTURE. Even once the social group is no longer poor, perhaps because they have immigrated to a country with more economic advantages, they will sometimes keep old traditions and call them cultural even those traditions are really class traditions. This explains all weddings where cash is exchanged: dollar dances, gifts of cash, money trees, etc... It originates from a time and place (and maybe still current) where the community worried about the financial stability of the marrying couple because they likely were farmers or herders or had the kind of job or lived in the kind of place where there wasn't any upper SES mobility and people regularly suffer from famine, poverty and insolvency.

I don't see any reflection on the merits of Asian cultures (sorry to all the racists on here). It's customary to give cash at weddings (or on other occasions), and that seems to me way more useful than giving crystal horses or something.

As for the previous post I don't know what it means to be a "poor or economically disadvantaged...culture." Do you think everyone in India is a farmer or herder? There are rich people in any country, including developing nations, and the rich folks in India give cash gifts too. I think the above post is way overgeneralized. Nice try though.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Cash and gold were only needed by a young couple if they didn't have family wealth. It's absolutely a custom arising from economic instability of the originating country/community.

I don't see why it has to be about need or economic instability. Even if you have family wealth, cash is more useful than a house full of unwanted blenders. I am American and when people at our office get married, the office gets them gift certificates to Amazon, not vases.

Good for you that you took a sociology class, but I think you aren't applying the textbook correctly.