I believe that the focus of hybrid8's question was on the cultural differences between the US and many others around the world as opposed to cash gifts at weddings.

My wife is from Laos and we do alot of entertaining. She is constantly shocked when an "American" guest asks if they should bring anything to the dinner. She believes that they should already know that there is an unspoken "list" of things to bring to such a function; wine, champaign, flowers, etc. She also doesn't understand why some people bring nothing to parties or dinners that someone hosts.

Our non-American guests (Europeans, Asians, middle-easterners) all seem to bring something to dinner. Elsewhere in the world, it is conisdered rude to not show some sort of appreciation for the effort that the host makes aside fom a simple Thank you.

In our wedding, we did not make a registry and we announced that if anyone wanted to give us a wedding gift, that it had to be in an envelope - a suttle reference to monetary-only gifts. Of course, we were already well-established, so a registry wouldn't have made sense.

It is mainly cultural (which is evidenced by some of the responses here). Imagine calling a Japanese man cheap for not leaving a tip in a restaurant here when it is rather insulting or irritating to tip in Japan.

The funny thing is that is seems to be a contemporary cultural thing, because when we invite older Americans (60+ years old), they always bring smething.

Personally, I like the idea of bringing something to dinner/weddings. It seems like the right thing to do.

I should have totally done at least a minor in anthropology and/or sociology. This kind of thing fascinates me to no end. That's why I posted in the first place. Again, I was in a real hurry when I wrote the initial post - about to step out to pick up food for the evening as we were hosting a couple of friends who just returned from a year away. My fiancée was already giving me dirty looks before I got half way through.

In retrospect I could have worded the subject so it would have a little less impact since from the initial replies I think it took the focus away from what I actually wanted to discuss.

There are not only huge differences between any part of Canada and the US, but also within each country, both covering such an enormous landscape. In my experience however, the US does tend toward a more homogeneous society. I can still remember being in Cape Cod and going to a supposedly "Portuguese" style bakery that might as well have been anything but and the people at the counter were in fact a little offensive about the national/cultural implications/associations. In Canada even many second generation citizens will still link themselves to the roots of their parents/grandparents. Certainly nearly every first generation Canadian I've ever met also considers themselves "xxxxx" (whatever the nationality of their parents).

So many of the customs brought from Europe, Asia and Middle East stick around. And in fact some of them even rub off on the long established anglo population (at least those I know). I think it's important to consider discussions such as this in context. And again, perhaps I should have done a better job of outlining the context and/or asking about customs elsewhere. I believe in the end (or up until now anyway) the gist has been worked through and I certainly understand some additional viewpoints. I hope no one here thinks I'm any more shallow than before I had started this thread. Yes, I'm a wine snob, but really down to earth otherwise.

With regards to last night's dinner... My friend, of eastern european origin, did not bring cash to my place for dinner. He did bring an amazing bottle of wine however. If anyone appreciates a fine wine, I can whole-heartedly recommend the 1994 Rioja from Torre Muga (Spain). If you can find a bottle under $100 it's well worth it.

Is this where being "bowled over" comes from?

Hugo

Surely that would be "over-bowled"?

Pca

We has some amount of being bowled over. One of our guests went "off registry" and got us a hand-carved wood bowl. At least it was small enough to be reasonably easy to handle. A closer relative has some sort of mental short circuit and came to the conclusion that a desktop grandfather-ish clock contraption was just absolutely the perfect gift. They spent a sizable amount of money on it. It's never been out of its box. And never will be. And, they bought it from some obscure location where I can't return it. And where on earth could I ever re-gift it? One guy gave an ice cream maker (because "that's what he always gives"). At least it was easy to return.

In my Jewish family, cash gifts are quite common, particularly for bar/bat mitzvahs (implicit expectation: the money will be invested to send the kid to college) but also for weddings. Several people made sizable gifts. We also did a wedding registry (online at Bed Bath and Beyond) and got ourselves a nice dish pattern and so forth. One relative decided that she could find a better price on some of the bits elsewhere, causing us to ultimately end up with uneven numbers of side plates. Could be worse, but not really a big deal.

In my wife's midwestern family, buying from the registry seemed to be the common answer. I don't think anybody gave cash, but my memory is fading.

In our paper invitation, we said nothing whatsoever about gifts. On our web page (URL included on the paper), we had links to the registry.

We certainly had no expectation of anybody giving anything in particular. There are non-trivial differences in the purchasing power of some of our friends and relatives. In the end, we roughly broke even, but that's largely due to a, umm, long tailed distribution of gifts.

In fact, it's worth pointing out that many people send gifts who do not attend the wedding at all. Usually that's people who would have attended but are unable to for whatever reason, but still. The wedding-as-event and the gift are not intrinsically conjoined; they are two leaves on the whole wedding tree.