"No gifts, please" - Etiquette experts, please chime in!

Thanks everyone for the thoughts and comments!

I think we will give it a try and see what the reaction is. I think we will be pretty adament about not registering though. We'll see! It's still pretty early, anyway.

The reason why it is improper from an etiquitte standpoint to say "no gifts" or even the cuter verison of "your presence is our gift," is that the focus is on gifts and it is considered impolite. That being said, we are in the middle of a terrible recession, money is on everyone's mind and maybe putting people at ease that they do not need to worry about the cost of the gift in addition to the expense of attending a destination wedding should trump etiquette depending on your individual situation. We have been trying to spread this through word of mouth, but I think that some people feel uncomfortable not giving a gift.

Me and my fiance don't want any gifts either, and we're just putting it on our website like most people have recommended.

One thing I try to remember is that traditional etiquette is generally based on traditional weddings, which destination weddings usually aren't. In my mind, the regular etiquette would be much more appropriate if I had 300 guests that I hardly knew that weren't paying $1200 in air fares. As it is, we know everyone who will attend our wedding fairly intimately, and can't imagine that any of them will possibly be offended (we do know that some of them would be stressed out without any info however).

All that being said, we suspect that some of the guests may absolutely insist on buying gifts, so we're considering registering somewhere like Amazon where we can register for small things that we'd like to have (books, the odd kitchen utensil, etc) and by avoiding registering for anything expensive, we hope to stop anyone from spending too much. The gifts would then also just be sent directly to our house, which would be very nice for obvious reasons.

Anyways, gl! Without all this etiquette stuff wedding planning would be a breeze!

We added it on our website under the "registry" link. We informed our guests we are not expecting any gifts. However we know that some people may still want to get us a gift, especially those who can not attend our wedding in Mexico so we do have a registery at Crate and Barrel where nothing is really that expensive. Ive also expressed this to my close friends and family so hopefully through word of mouth our guests will know. Another option is to have a "honeymoon registery" for people who really want to get you something but its not a toaster or just cash

This "no gifts please" question is a real touchy subject. I'm a firm believer in just letting people do what they want & not to get so hung up on the etiquette thing. If someone wants to buy a gift, give them the pleasure of doing so. I can't believe that people attending a DW would actually take a gift with them, wouldn't they send it or give it to the wedding couple prior or soon after the wedding instead ? I can't imagine "shlupping" a gift all the way to Jamaica !!

Love the "your presence is our present" going to add that to my site. The memories of family and friends supporting you will out last towels and toasters.

We felt the same way and REALLY didn't want any gifts!! I copied off another website I saw, and wrote, "Your presence is gift enough." but then I added, "that being said, we have received many requests for a registry...." and it continues on. I really had people get mad at me and tell me that they would just get us something from somewhere that we wouldn't necessarily want..etc...etc...

So, I felt the closest thing I could do is write the above and then we registered for a Honeymoon Registry where a certain percantage of the money "raised" went to the Breast Cancer Research Foundation (I wrote a thread about this...) so this way, our guests know that we aren't trying to get money out of them, but if they HAVE to give us a gift, at least they know that we are sending some of it to a charity...I just felt like this was the perfect medium ground...for us

My fiance and I haven't even set our wedding date yet but already have been fielding gift questions. We've both made it very clear to people that since we are having a destination wedding we don't want any gifts. We are a couple in our 20s and could certainly use the money/gifts... but we have been living together for awhile already so there's nothing that we really NEED for our home or anything like that... however, I can't imagine asking someone to spend so much to come to my wedding and then give a gift as well! Especially since part of the reason for us having a destination wedding is to save some money on the whole event!

That being said, there have been a few people I have told this to that have been genuinely upset at the idea of not getting us a wedding gift, and really don't like the "no gifts" policy. I think that our not wanting to make people get us gifts has been misinterpreted as us saying that we don't want what people would like to give us. Of course that's not the case. Gifts are wonderful, I just don't want anyone to feel like we're expecting any because we're not!

So personally I think that I will say something on our future wedsite about our wedding being non-traditional therefore we request no gifts, and that particularly for those who are able to attend, our guests presence on our special day is all the gift that we want... but I don't know, I may have to do a small registry for those who are really insistent.

It's been really helpful reading this thread....my fiancee and I are both students who are just finishing up our studies and starting to work full-time again...we also have decided not to do a registry for a few reasons... a) doing a destination wedding, we understand the expense of coming down for our guests, there also may be a huge move in our future so from a practical sense, we can't take a lot with us esp. anything electrical as the outlets will be different.

However, knowing our family and friends, they will insist on giving us a gift....that being said, we weren't sure if we should include an insert into our invites about gifts or just include something on our website...