Others paying for part of the wedding

Personally I wouldn’t have felt comfortable taking money from any of our friends to help pay for the wedding.

I would also politely turn down the money. I'd say something along the lines of "that's very sweet and we thank you for your generosity. All we'd love from you is your presence at our wedding to celebrate with you!"

They can't just gift you cash? If it's not a family member, I wouldn't feel comfortable accepting cash with strings. Even when it is family, that stirs up drama enough

That's very generous of them to offer to pay an amount for the your wedding as an gift. Some may say you shouldn't or politely decline but it all depends on how close are these friends of yours and if you indeed are struggling to pay for some of the things in your wedding.

People give you money at your wedding as wedding gifts or in their cards for you and your fh to spend whatever you want with that money so if your friends are giving you money as a wedding gift to help you I say go for it I mean my fmil help pay for some of my wedding dress after I told her she didn't have too. She knew we could afford it but she wanted to give me that gift of helping towards our wedding.

I say do whats best for you and what you and your fh decide to do.

I think it depends on what they're paying for. Are they saying 'hey ill buy your cake instead of giving you cash after the event is over'. I'm not sure how i'd feel. I think I would prefer they just give the cash amount they planned to gift and you can put it towards whatever YOU want. If they're asking to pay for a specific element they may have more opinions than you'd like

I would politely decline, accepting money from someone who isn't family just seems odd to me.

I agree with you Amber

Very thoughtful and generous of them, but I would politely decline. I worry about for some reason the gift falling through.. for example when you plan your budget, you take their gift into account. If for some reason they don’t follow through, you will be stuck paying for what they promised. Perhaps even extending your budget.

I agree with Amber as well. In theory the idea of turning down money is very nice, but in reality every bit can count. If the money would make a big difference to you I would take it and just express my gratitude. Maybe publicly acknowledge it IF the guest wants during toasts.

That said there are a lot of questions. Is there a particular amount he wants to donate? 100? 500? 5000? Does he want to write a check for an amount and that's it, or does he want pay for a specific element, like the bar, the cake, or the DJ?

I would say something to the effect of "Thank you for the generous offer but we have the wedding covered. If you would like to give us whatever amount you are comfortable with as a gift at the wedding, you are welcome to do so and it will be very much appreciated but not required. We only ask that you celebrate with us on our day."

This recently happened to me...
My friend offerred to help pay for the honeymoon and I told her that was fine because I understood it as an "early wedding present" thinking it would be typical wedding present size. She transferred $500 to my account.
The advice I was given was to keep the gift.

Trust that your friend knows what they are doing. They love you and want to share what they can with you (for some they might have a lot more they can share than we expect). Accepting such generous gifts is hard but maybe that is just how your friend chooses to show their love and support.