Gift Question - no gifts from some?

[DMBFiredancer]

We had an ABSOLUTELY PERFECT day on Saturday (pictures will be coming soon!!!!)

We just opened our cards and gifts and started to panic because we thought some gifts or cards were lost or stolen, but maybe some people just didnt give gifts. My question to those of you who are married is....did some people just not bring a card or gift? About how many?

Our of 70, we did not get a card or gift from about 13 people. I am not asking this because we expect gifts...I am just asking this to make sure I should not panic about something being lost or stolen, since obviously I cannot ask the people if they gave gifts. We had a very secure card box that was put in my bridal area 1/2 way through the reception. The only way to get cards out would be to tip it over and pull them through.

Thanks ladies!

My 7/25 crew, I cant wait to see your pics and hear your stories once I have more time to read the boards at the end of the week!!

 

[Hudson_Hawk]

I''m in the same boat as you hun so I''m standing by with you....

 

[Hudson_Hawk]

oh, and congrats!!

 

[Blair138]

Don''t freak out, some people didn''t give us gifts or cards either. Some people may have forgotten their card (my grandma forgot hers at her house), and some people send a gift later but don''t think to give you a card at the wedding. Then others don''t give a gift at all!

 

[cindygenit]

It sounds like you had your gifts placed securely, so some people probably just didn''t give gifts. Maybe a some people chipped in towards one BIG gift for you?

There could be a myriad of reasons, like maybe some people chose to give you a card and no gift???

 

[DMBFiredancer]

Thank you for letting me know I am not alone...just hearing that makes me breathe a little that maybe we didnt lose anything or have anything stolen. A friend said people have a year to give something, but the people we were missing from (FI's sister, VERY close friends who didnt travel, etc) surprised us.

 

[DMBFiredancer]

Date: 7/27/2009 10:18:49 PM
Author: Hudson_Hawk
oh, and congrats!!

same to you, hon!

 

[galvana]

Congrats DMB - im glad you posted this and im also glad to see the others are having the same thing happen.
I had a handful not give a card or anything and i thought they were lost.

hope you had an awesome day! can''t wait to see pics, they trickle in slowly -0

 

[meresal]

Congrats on the wedding DMB!!! I hope you had a wonderful day

I wouldn''t worry about not receiving all your gifts just yet. Some people will wait till after the wedding to order. Otherwise i would just assume they didn''t give anything.

 

[MishB]

This is the reason why I have been quite upset to have not received a thank you card for the last 2 weddings I''ve attended. In both cases they requested ''cash'' or ''card'' gifts, but as we didn''t get a thank you card I have no idea whether they got the gift, or it was misplaced, slipped behind the table etc, and they have been cursing us for not giving a gift.

 

[Haven]

Congratulations!

I think people often forget to leave the gift if they bring a card with a check in it. I know a lot of men leave the reception with that card still in their breast pocket.

I bet you''ll get some gifts in the mail in the next few weeks, we had things dribble in for a few months after the wedding.

 

[oobiecoo]

We didn't get gifts or cards from a couple of our guests. About 4 out of 100 maybe? One sent a card about 2 months later in the mail and another gave us our gift at Christmas a few months later. Its been over a year now and still haven't heard anything from the other couple of guests. I just hope their gifts or cards or whatever weren't lost but we tried really hard to make sure they didn't get put in the wrong car/bag/whatever by mistake. I also wonder if maybe one of the families considered their shower gift to count as our wedding gift too? I've never heard of that but you never know. I bet at least a couple of your gifts are sent late!

ETA: I just saw that your DH's sis was one of the missing gifts... same with my sister-in-law! So odd.

 

[DMBFiredancer]

Someone just slipped and said to us "Did Craig''s sister give you the message sheets we filled out?"

That was a huge clue. She is a huge scrapbooker and we have a feeling that we now know why her gift was not there. She is probably up to something!

It just feels good knowing that we didnt mess up and lose something. We were so worried!

 

[emeraldlover1]

A co-worker of mine was at a wedding earlier this year and some of the cards/gifts were stolen. The people that gave the gifts didn''t think anything of it because the checks were cashed. They bride and groom must have had some idea what went on and they had to tell people, "If you intended to give us a gift, please let us know as a few of our guests gifts were stolen". YIKES.

 

[NakedFinger]

Ugh I was at a wedding once where one of the banquet servers took the ENTIRE birdcage of envelopes! Every single CASH gift, gone

Since you have most of your gifts, and you were smart enough to keep it near you, I doubt you have to worry about stolen cards.

However, as a wedding planner, one of my biggest pet peeves (noted, there are a few!

) is when guests just throw the card anywhere! Its not like any venue is 100% safe you know? Especially when the ceremony is at the venue, because typically the gift table isnt set up until dinner (near the heard table/sweetheart table). So when guests arrive, they dont know where to put it, dont want to hang onto it, so they just leave the card on a table somwhere (like the placecard table or something). You would be surprised how often this happens. I once had a weddng, where the foyer space for the ballroom where the ceremony was held, was right off the lobby. About 20 guests put their cards on one of the display tables (meant for food!) and went into the ceremony in the other room. I dont know how anyone could think thats ok, espeically since is unsupervised, AND its right off the lobby so ANYONE could just take them! Whew ok sorry vent over!

Anyway, my point to all that was that you have the majority of your cards in your box, so like you said, the only way they could get out is if somone picked it up and fished it out, which I doubt happened. However it is quite possible that some people left the card in areas other than that box. Maybe there was a pile somewhere and someone stole it, maybe one of your guests saw the pile, took it, and intended to give it to you. Or sometimes guests hand them to the mom or dad? As others have said though, I would allow some time for items to trickle in. Sometimes people just flat out forget to leave it in the envelope box (alcohol will do that to you!) and will mail it out later. Give it some time before stressing out, then let us know what happens! Good luck!

 

[Sabine]

Congrats! It sounds like you might have just had some guests who didn''t give gifts, although that sounds like a high percentage to me.

We didn''t receive either a card or a gift from about 5 of our 180 guests.

 

[neatfreak]

Maybe I am thinking of someone else here so pardon me if I am-but you are on the younger side correct? I have learned that when the first of our friends started to get married in their mid-late 20''s a LOT of friends, many men especially, didn''t know they were supposed to bring gifts or cards.

So if a lot of these missing gifts/cards are from youngish people-that may be why. Many are clueless about wedding etiquette until they''ve been to a few...

 

[Clairitek]

I am one of those people who almost always ends up giving the gift AFTER the wedding so I wouldn''t worry too much. It sounds like that is what has happened in this case.

 

[DMBFiredancer]

Date: 7/28/2009 11:24:45 AM
Author: neatfreak
Maybe I am thinking of someone else here so pardon me if I am-but you are on the younger side correct? I have learned that when the first of our friends started to get married in their mid-late 20''s a LOT of friends, many men especially, didn''t know they were supposed to bring gifts or cards.


So if a lot of these missing gifts/cards are from youngish people-that may be why. Many are clueless about wedding etiquette until they''ve been to a few...

Must be thinking of someone else...I am 39. But this is a good point and possibly explains 2 of them. Thank you for bringing this up...good point!

 

[ficklefaye]

i know some people who have waited nearly a year to give their wedding present to the couple, so it''s possible that something might come later

 

[Lilac]

We had a bunch of people who didn''t give gifts and some ended up giving a few weeks after the wedding, while others just never gave us anything. Obviously we can''t say anything to them about it, so we just have to hope nothing was lost (which I don''t think it was.) My mom spent a few weeks worrying that gifts had been stolen or lost somehow, but I just think those people either forgot to give us the gift, or possibly even thought they sent one.

 

[Rock_of_Love]

I''m surprised to realize that gifts actually *do* get stolen.

I''m only saying this because I received a very strange phone call from the bride''s stepfather a year to the date after the wedding. He basically said they were trying to solve a "mystery" of some missing gifts..."thought they might be stolen"...to "please let them know what I had given as a gift"...if I hadn''t given a gift that "there was still time to send one"...and so on! I thought it was so tacky and I thought BS that they thought the gifts were stolen, they were just trying to get gifts from the folks who hadn''t given them! My friend got a call, too!

So, some of you might say, "well, you should''ve given a gift." But, in all honesty, I completely forgot!! It was a weird situation where I had previously been very good friends with the bride and groom, we had a pretty bad falling out, but they still invited me (and another friend they had the falling out with) to the wedding. I really didn''t feel comfortable going, but it was in town and I felt obligated. In hindsight, I really shoud not have gone.

I am someone who usually gives the gift after the wedding, and I had planned to get a gift for several months after the wedding. But, it was sort of "out of sight, out of mind" since neither of them are really in my life anymore (or were at the time of the wedding).

After the stepfather phone call, while I was reminded that I hadn''t sent a gift, I was so offended by the call, that there was NO WAY I was going to send a gift now!

This caused much discussion amongst my friends about gift giving at weddings. And, we have sort of come to the conclusion that it really should be a choice and NOT expected. Especially for our group, where many of us are getting married older in our lives when we are more settled in our careers and lives, that we don''t need the typical wedding gifts that a new, young couple just starting out would need. Also, we thought a tactful way to "remind" folks, if you want to, would be to send a thank you card to everyone who attended, not just the ones who sent gifts...thank them for their presence and support.

I am getting married next year and, in all honesty, I don''t want or expect gifts, but if someone *wants* to give us one anyway, I will absolutely be gracious.

Just some thoughts on the subject...sorry so long...but I''m curious what you ladies think.