I was just married a month ago, so I would like to offer a few fresh perspectives.
1. Cash gifts are wonderful, and always the right color. We are older, and each had our separate households, so we’re all set in the chotchkes and appliance department. In fact, if you would come to our house and take some of our surplus chotchkes, that would make a wonderful gift.
2. Please do not bring the gifts to the reception — it is too easy for them to get lost, and it is just another thing for the newlyweds to keep track of on a busy day. Etiquette books tell you this, and I have been trying to convince my new bride of this for a few years. Now that she has had the experience, she finally agrees with me.
We have some generous friends who I am pretty sure sent a gift, but we did not receive it. This puts us in an embarrasing position. It would be rude to ask directly, and rude not to send an acknowledgment. I did send a card thanking them for their attendance, and thanking him for standing by as ‘backup witness’, in case one of the two witnesses got writer’s cramp.
3. Don’t send perishable or time-sensitive items, unless you are delivering them yourself.
My brother sent 150 roses for our reception from Florida, where he lives. He shipped them by overnight mail, and he waited for them to be delivered all day. They were actually delivered about 10 days later, and had lost some of their, um, beauty, in the interim. Fortunately, he can get a refund for the postage, which was substantial, and possibly an insurance payment for part of the cost of the flowers from the postal insurance.
I was very touched by his gesture, but I felt awful that he was waiting for the delivery here, and the flowers wouldn’t have matched our tablecloths or decor at the reception. He was very disappointed, and that detracted a bit from our joy on that day.
One other thought:
One cousin sent a very large cash gift. She is not doing well financially, and I know that this gift represents perhaps a half-week’s salary for her. That makes me feel a bit guilty. I can’t return it, so all I can really do is feel bad about it, and be extra-nice to her the next time I see her.
My mother gave us a huge gift, 50 times the size of this cousin’s gift. But, she’s my mother, she’s been waiting and saving for this, she derived a huge amount of personal satisfaction from giving the gift, etc., and she can afford it.
So, it’s not the size or monetary value of the gift that counts, but rather the feeling, and I still get a twinge of guilt or something, when thinking of the gift the cousin gift.