Money Times With Jill Kerby

Alternative wedding gifts for an austerity age I WENT to some pretty lavish weddings in the boom years. There were never fewer than 150 guests and four bridesmaids, and wedding gowns were more than likely bought in London, Paris or New York rather than in Dublin or Cork. Some of the weddings â€â€ actually too many of the weddings â€â€ took place outside this country, with invitations given to attend the nuptials in the Canaries and on mainland Spain, Italy, France, the Seychelles (for crying out loud) and even the American Virgin Islands. Some of those â€Å“Celtic Tigerâ€Â brides and grooms are now (privately at least) expressing a certain amount of wedding regret. They are deeply entrenched in a general state of negative equity, as opposed to just mortgage-related equity, having spent €30,000 on the wedding, another €10,000 on the honeymoon and €20,000-€50,000 on completely outfitting their brand new home and garden (boy, do they regret putting in all that wooden decking). Some lessons appear to have been learned from those experiences, however. One couple whose wedding we will attend this summer will marry in her local church and have the reception in marquees at her motherâ€â„¢s home, which has a big garden. Another has booked a lovely country house hotel for just 50 guests in Co Meath and another is having their tiny reception in their favourite Dublin restaurant. Are they the exception? Probably, but restaurants, modest country hotels and GAA and rugby club halls report that their wedding business is holding up very well. A recent survey by an Irish wedding planner website of 1,200 couples engaged since 2010-11 who will marry this year claims that the average cost of a wedding is now just €23,500, with another €5,500 spent on the honeymoon. From previous estimates, this is about €10k less than was spent during the boom years. Unless the finance has been in place for some time, however, I would doubt that the bulk of that €29,000 is being borrowed. Banks are not lending heavily for mortgages, let alone weddings. The survey does say that nearly half of couples are saving money by making their own invitations and table favours and that brides are skimping more on flowers (but not on their make-up). Average guest numbers are now closer to 100-150 than 150-200. One trend that is well established is that only 1% of future brides expect their families to pay for their wedding and 50% of the couples say they prefer cash and gift vouchers to actual gifts. Like my mother and her mother before her, I prefer to give beautiful bed linen to cash, ideally chosen by the bride as part of her bridal list. But I am also sticking to a gift budget. Iâ€â„¢m also willing to give a voucher to couples who already have plenty of goods so that that they can choose the items they want themselves. (The One4All vouchers I wrote about recently are ideal because they are accepted in over 5,000 retail outlets and because they carry the An Post guarantee and can be replaced if lost or stolen, so long as you record the card code.) For brides and grooms on tighter budgets, lower incomes and modest expectations (who are not spending a yearâ€â„¢s wages on their wedding and honeymoon), a really generous friend or family member might consider more novel and perhaps more modest â€Å“cashâ€Â options. I know a gardener (short of cash) who offered his labour free as well as a pallet of plants for a newly married couple with a new home as his wedding gift. They also received restaurant vouchers from a group of friends who promised to try and join them for nights out they otherwise might not be able to afford. I know parents who offered to pay the rent for their son and new daughter-in-law for the first year of their marriage (they already had a baby), as they were saving for a down-payment for a home of their own. â€Å“Itâ€â„¢s tough enough that first year with a baby. We thought this was a way to take some pressure off them and to allow them to put that savings where they was really needed,â€Â his mother told me. Other alternative gifts that have arrived for the couple, who are marrying in her parentsâ€â„¢ garden this summer, included a couple of restaurant vouchers and the offer of the use of a holiday home in Portugal for two weeks in the coming year. â€Å“The older friends who offered them their place in Portugal are very generous in letting people use their holiday place, and they said they should invite as many of their own friends who can afford the flight to come out too,â€Â his mother explained. â€Å“The kids are making a big contribution to the wedding and we (both sets of parents) are also paying. But money is tight for everyone and a gift like this is really thoughtful.â€Â