International wedding and receiving gifts?

You don't have any discretion over what your guests do or do not choose to send or give. The wedding being international does not make it more acceptable to ask your guests for any gift, especially money. If anyone asks where you are registered you can just say that you aren't since you are saving for whatever.

Technically you should not talk gifts at all, but as a current guest of an international wedding, I do want to know (without texting the couple, more awkward). My friend wrote something like this on his website under Registry tab:

We don't need you to bring gifts. Your presence is enough! But if you really want to give us something, we have made a small registry (link) or here's how you can give us a monetary gift: 1) hand deliver cash or check to us at the wedding. Our legal names are: X and Y. 2) Venmo, square cash or whatever electronic payment to (email). Banks can be very specific with names even if you don't have a nickname. Best wishes.

View Quoted Comment Practically speaking, we don’t have much room to take gifts back with us to our country.

View Quoted Comment I would just not register anywhere then. Your guests will likely get the hint and gift you cash. Plus, if you do not live in the country your event is being held, I’m sure guests will use common sense and not bring you physical gifts.

Hi!! We are doing this too!! We're in Nepal for three years, but going home for our wedding in the US.

Some posters here may not realize that in the US, proper etiquette IS to make a registry. That's to avoid your guests wasting their money on things you won't use...the joke is always, "Another toaster, thank you!" This isn't the same abroad. I just spoke with a friend here who says that in India, it would be rude to ask for gifts. Instead, you just accept 200 sets of dishes.

Since our culture does want registries, we made two. The first is a small registry with things we'd actually use or want to store in the US on myregistry.com. It also has an option to add a "cash gift." In addition to this, we added a fund for buying pottery dishes.

Our bigger registry is a honeymoon registry on travelersjoy.com. You put all sorts of things you'd like for your honeymoon, which guests can "purchase," but it's actually just a cash pot.

Good luck!

View Quoted Comment That is not true. The only etiquette issue still under debate by some is whether registering is considered acceptable or not. Most etiquette sources today would say it is, within certain parameters designed to make it look like the couple is not asking for gifts. So no links to a registry on an invitation, guests need to find it on their own, third party link on a website etc.


Traditional US etiquette, still followed by your traditional manners sticklers, continues to this day to disapprove registries because regardless of how you spin it, everyone knows they are wish lists for presents.
But no etiquette says it’s improper NOT to register. All that implies is that the couple is not thinking of gifts.

View Quoted Comment The entire intro paragraph on our registry says that their presence is the greatest gift, and how grateful we are to have them come out to support us. Then, we have a little info about how if they really wish to give us something, we are living abroad, so we can't handle a lot of material items. So, they could give to these funds if desired.


Our other option is to simply give away enormous piles of material things that are given without knowing our situation.
In our friend and family circles, everyone puts registry links on their invitations and websites, even for higher caliber events. It could also be a regional thing. I should amend my previous post to say that I don't think there's one blanket way to do anything in the US.

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While the US is certainly a mixing pot of cultures, and there are exceptions, usually whenever someone talks about doing things differently in their "region" or "circle" it's more about lack of knowledge than etiquette, which is a long established and organized set of guidelines designed to make everyday interaction easier within a broader society. If it works for you and yours, then it's a free country, but the risk you run in a day and age when people are on the move and come from all over is that people will consider it greedy or bad manners. You'll never hear about it, though, because it's also rude to tell someone they've committed a faux pas.

Again, I know of no region where not thinking about presents people might give you would or could ever be considered rude.

View Quoted Comment Ok. I'm from Chicago and have lived in New York, Minnesota, New Mexico, Arizona, the Bay Area, and central Illinois (as well as Beligum, Thailand, and Nepal). We were getting bugged about not having registries. Our family even gets very upset if we don't have Christmas lists. They think it's very rude if we make them think too much and then waste their money. They do also choose extra gifts to give.
The good thing is that everyone on here gets to make choices that work for them, and since this poster was fretting about a registry, she obviously comes from some kind of background where it is expected. Namaste 🙏

View Quoted Comment Sharing how you wrote your registry is the most practical answer I have heard so far. I will use that, thank you.

View Quoted Comment Glad to help! On the Wedding Wire website maker tool, on the Registry page, they literally have Traveler's Joy as one of the partnered options. We had to type in MyRegistry.com as text.
You have to select at least one partner for the Wedding Wire Registry page to show. But if you do, you get a blurb that says "we get a cut of this" or something on your page, which is confusing, because we're not - WW is. To get around it, we had to create a duplicate Registry page, type in our links, and hide the WW Registry page. It's silly, but it worked.Good luck!!! 🙏