How Much Cash to Give as a Wedding Gift: 3 Rules

The invitation is propped against the fruit bowl on your counter. Ivory envelope, your name in calligraphy, RSVP card with a little stamp already on it. You're happy for them. You're also, quietly, doing math. How much goes in the card? Too little and you feel cheap at the sweetheart table. Too much and you're eating cereal for dinner until payday.

Here's the thing nobody says out loud: everyone at that reception is running the same calculation. And there's a rough set of rules the bridal group chats have been passing around for years. We finally wrote them down in one place. Three rules. That's it.

Rule 1: Cover your seat

The baseline is $150-200 per guest attending. That's the number to start from before anything else.

The logic is simple. The couple is paying real money for you to be in that room: a plated dinner, an open bar, a chair, a centerpiece, a slice of a cake that cost more than your monthly grocery bill. "Cover your seat" means your gift should roughly offset what it costs to host you. It isn't a rule anyone will enforce, and no couple worth celebrating is checking receipts at the door. But it's the honest floor most people are working from.

A few things that trip people up:

1. "Per guest attending" means per person, not per invite. If you and a plus-one both go, you're covering two seats. A couple attending together lands closer to $300-400 combined, not $150.
2. Declining the invite changes the math. If you can't make it, you're not covering a seat, so there's no dinner-and-bar cost to offset. A smaller gift ($50-100) or a registry item is completely appropriate. More on that below.
3. The seat cost varies wildly by wedding. A backyard barbecue and a downtown hotel ballroom are not the same per-plate spend. You don't need to guess the exact catering invoice. The $150-200 range already bakes in a reasonable average.

If you're the one planning the wedding and wondering why guests seem to hover around that number, it's because your per-plate cost is doing the talking. You can see exactly where those dollars go when you track your full budget instead of guessing.

Rule 2: Know your tier

Covering your seat is the floor. What you actually give depends on how close you are to the couple. Relationship is the real dial here, and it breaks down cleanly:

• Coworker: $75. Someone you're friendly with at the office, maybe grab lunch with, but don't text on weekends. You were invited because they like you and the guest list had room. A thoughtful, modest gift is exactly right.
• Friend: $150. A genuine friend. You've been to their birthday, you know their partner's name, you'd help them move (grudgingly). This is the meat of most wedding guest lists.
• Close friend or family: $200+. The people who've been in the group chat for a decade. Siblings, cousins you actually talk to, the friend who held your hair back in college. The "plus" is real here. It's not unusual for this tier to land at $250, $300, or higher, especially if you're in the wedding party or the couple is genuinely close to you.

What if the tiers and "cover your seat" disagree?

They usually agree, which is the point. But say you're a coworker ($75) invited to a wedding where covering your seat suggests $200. Which wins?

Go with the higher number if you can comfortably afford it, and don't stress if you can't. Etiquette is a suggestion, not a subpoena. Being invited at all means they wanted you there more than they wanted your envelope. Give what fits your budget and your relationship, and let the calculator do the rest.

What if you're broke this season?

Wedding season is expensive when three friends get married in the same summer. If money is tight, a heartfelt card plus a $50-75 registry item is never an insult. The couple would rather have you in the room than have you skip the whole thing over the gift. Nobody serious is keeping a spreadsheet of who gave what.

Rule 3: The city premium

Here's the rule most people forget until they're staring at flight prices. For a destination or NYC/LA wedding, add $50 to every tier.

Major-metro and destination weddings cost more to host, full stop. Venues in NYC or LA, resort blocks, higher catering minimums, the whole thing runs hotter. The unwritten rule adjusts for it: the city premium adds $50 to every tier without question.

So the tiers shift like this:

Relationship	Standard	City / destination
Coworker	$75	$125
Friend	$150	$200
Close friend or family	$200+	$250+

One honest exception: destination weddings where you're spending real money to attend. If you flew across the country, booked three nights at the resort, and took time off work, your presence is a significant gift. In that case, don't feel obligated to stack the full city premium on top of a $1,200 travel bill. The couple invited you knowing what the trip costs. A gift on the lower end of your tier, plus the fact that you showed up, is more than enough.

Cash, registry, or both?

The three rules are written in cash because cash is the cleanest way to hit a number, and plenty of couples (especially those who already live together) prefer it. But the same dollar figures translate directly to a registry gift or a honeymoon-fund contribution.

A quick guide to picking the format:

1. Cash or a bank/app transfer works when there's no registry, when the invite mentions a honeymoon or house fund, or when you just want it simple.
2. A registry item is great when you want to give something they'll keep and remember. Match the dollar amount to your tier: a coworker-tier gift lands around $75, a close-friend gift around $200.
3. A group gift lets several friends go in together on one big-ticket registry item. Your share should still roughly match your individual tier.

Whatever the format, the target number stays the same. A $150 stand mixer and $150 in an envelope carry the same weight.

Red flags and awkward situations to watch for

A few traps that make otherwise generous people feel weird:

• Feeling pressured by a "suggested" amount. If an invitation or a wedding website hints at a specific dollar figure, that's a red flag on the couple's side, not an obligation on yours. Give based on the three rules and your budget, not their ask.
• Cash-bar weddings. If you paid for your own drinks all night, your "seat" cost the couple less. It's completely fair to land at the lower end of your range.
• Multiple events, one gift. You are not expected to bring a separate gift to the engagement party, the shower, and the wedding at full tier each time. The wedding gift is the main event. Shower and engagement gifts are smaller, in the $25-50 range, and the total across everything should still feel proportional to your relationship.
• The plus-one you barely know. If you're someone's date to a wedding where you don't know the couple, you can split a single gift with the person who invited you rather than each covering a full seat.
• Getting talked into "keeping up." The friend who insists everyone in the group gives $300 is doing wedding math for their own comfort, not yours. Your envelope is your business.

The quick version

Save this for the next invitation that hits your mailbox, and send it to the friend who just got engaged. They need it on the other side of the equation too.

1. Cover your seat. Start at $150-200 per guest actually attending. Two of you going means two seats.
2. Know your tier. Coworker $75, friend $150, close friend or family $200+.
3. Add the city premium. Destination or NYC/LA wedding, add $50 to every tier without question.
4. Adjust for reality. Can't attend, tight budget, or a big travel bill? Scale down guilt-free. Presence counts.
5. Format is flexible. Cash, registry, or honeymoon fund all hit the same number.

And if you're the one planning the wedding, these rules only make sense once you know what a seat actually costs you. Track your spending and compare vendors free at Altared, and browse more wedding etiquette breakdowns while you're at it.