International Nesties
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Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
German wedding gifts
What is customary to give as a gift at a German wedding? We are going to the wedding of some friends of ours who are both German this summer. I want to make sure we're OK to give them a card with cash. If so, how much is typically given? I asked my mom, but she hasn't been to a wedding in Germany since she first moved to the US and I'm sure that the cultural norms surrounding weddings in the GDR were entirely different than what goes on today. Also, is there anything I should know to steer clear of dress wise? They're both German but the wedding is at a chateau in Austria if that helps.
Re: German wedding gifts
DH says that if they are a couple in which you are closer to. Then cash and card are fine. Like 50-100 Euros is typical. More or less wouldn't be an issue either. That's around what we got in cards from DH's family too. Seriously though half his family wanted to give us a microwave.
Apparently that's the gift to give on H's side but since we were relocating that didn't happen.
If they weren't someone you were really close to a little gift would be fine too.
I think cash and card wouldn't be untypical. Maybe you could attach a little marzipan pig. Since pigs bring good luck.
As far as dress DH says, "American women dress flamboyantly." I think he thinks we all prance around in mini-skirts. lol! Basically, you could wear what you would normally wear to a wedding.
2012 Reading Challenge
Now Nesting from Chicago, IL My nail blog:
A lot of what alli said, except the microwave part. :-) Since a majority of couples live together before they get married anymore, they usually have all their household things together. Even for our friends who haven't lived together, they often then have 2 households that they're combining, so they're really not looking for more stuff. At 90% of the weddings we go to, we give money, and that's mostly what we got at our wedding, too. I would love to just put money in a card, and some people definitely do that, but DH is one who thinks that's too little effort, so he/we end up doing something fancy with the money. For example we once went together with some friends and got 100? worth of 1 and 2? coins. Then we got a cucumber, stuck it in a little flower pot with sand (if you put toothpicks sticking out of the part of the cucumber under the sand then it stays upright while you pour in the sand), and buried some of the coins in the sand and some of them we stuck into the cucumber so it looked like a cactus. It looked cool, but yeah, I'm more of a money-in-the-card kind of girl.
And dress code in my experience is slightly more formal than at the US weddings I'm used to. There a sundress is ok in the summer, but here the weddings I've been to were all pretty formal (knee-length dress or slacks suit is ok, but a sundress might stick out).
At the wedding I went to two years ago it seemed that most of the people that gave money did it in some kind of fancy way. I remember most specifically a money tree. We were the only non-Germans and did a combo of a small gift and a gift card. And a group of our friends pooled their money together to give them a gift.
As for dress, one of my German friends commented that she thought that it was the most casually dressed wedding she'd ever been to. But, the couple is very earthy and the wedding wasn't in a chateau.
2012 Reading Challenge
Now Nesting from Chicago, IL My nail blog:
money. In a creative way...this means a kids sandbucket filled with sand and lots of 1 and 2 Euro pieces for somewhere between 50-100 Euros and a sieve for them to sift them out, jello mold with money in the jello, pudding with money in it, money tree, etc. And yes I?ve seen all of the above....the jello one was interesting, to say the least.
Usually pretty fancy dress, too. I?ve seen lots of satin/taffeta dresses taht looked like prom or evening dresses, and I?ve seen people go in nice pant suits with the silk scarf for color/pizazz. Do whatever works for you.
Where is the wedding going to be? That kind of makes a difference, too.
Definitely. I'm glad no one did it for our wedding, and I felt kind of bad giving it as a gift, but I was out-voted. Usually DH does something fancy that doesn't involve sand or jello...
BFP Apr 2012, EDD Dec 19 2012 * twin h/b at 6wk, 9wk scan * Baby A lost at 12wks, Baby B was my rainbow born at 36wks
All our German friends give IBANs with the invite, we put 100euro in the account, everyone is happy
Dress, man in suits and ladies in dresses of varying fanciness.
All the German family/friends I know of do money and a card as well, so I guess that really is your best bet.
I once saw someone do a loaf of white bread with some slits in it and money shoved in there (as the first period of marriage is called the 'white bread weeks' or something like that.) I think the white bread thing is both German and Dutch, but it might just be Dutch, not 100 percent sure whether it were Dutchies or Germans who did that for my cousin.
My food blog
What I'm looking forward to in 2012:
Eating our way through (northern) Italy on vacation
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