Using wedding gifts before the wedding?

I would use them aha I mean that’s the point of giving you the gift, for you to have and use.

I don't see why you can't use them right away! The only thing I would recommend is maybe not using the gift until you write a thank you note for it?

We also used our gifts before our wedding, however, your mom is correct that the expectation is to return (or at least offer to return) gifts if the wedding was cancelled for whatever reason.

We used ours! We received everything on our registries before our wedding so we would’ve been living in a house filled with boxes if we waited until after haha.

View Quoted Comment

We have so many boxes in our respective homes that I have opened to write thank you notes but have otherwise just been stacking in a corner!

I would definitely use them

View Quoted Comment Gotcha! Yeah we wouldn’t have been able to stack over 150 boxes in a corner but we live in California so not much space! We opened and found a home for everything!

Your mom is correct regarding that if the wedding were to be cancelled, it makes a return impossible. And etiquette agrees to wait until the wedding actually occurs since anything can happen between now and then. But most people are not superstitious. Make sure to send out prompt thank you notes.

Definitely use it.

I'm one of those people who believes in bad luck lol. We got a couple gifts from my work, and I am not using them until we legally get married at our minimony, even though our big wedding is next year. My FH thinks I'm nuts but doesn't care if we do or don't use them before the wedding. I wouldn't say I'm holding out because I want to wait to make sure the wedding goes through, because that's kinda terrible lol. It's more about the bad luck thing like OP's mom said.

FH and I live together and we've used stuff as we've gotten it. Some was bridal shower gifts, but we've also gotten stuff from guests that aren't attending. We've used pretty much everything and have written thank you notes as they have come

We used all of our gifts we received before the wedding. There is no need to wait until you're married. I definitely don't think it is bad luck.

I would use it. We have a 1 bedroom apartment, so as we got gifts from the shower/early wedding gifts, we started putting things away and using them because there was just no room to store boxes. We aren't very superstitious and had already lived together for 6 years prior to the wedding, so we weren't too worried about suddenly calling it off.

If you and your FH are comfortable with it, go for it. I don't think using gifts before the wedding is likely to end your relationship, but if it did, you'd be the one cleaning it up, not your mom.


Our gifts were delivered to my parents house and my shower was at his parents house, and most of them are still in those places, but we took some things that we knew we could use right away and used them. We still got married. Nothing bad happened during or as a result of the wedding (even though it was in 2020).