Bridal shower registry

The entire purpose of a shower is to shower the bride or the couple with gifts. If you don’t want physical gifts, decline the offer for a shower.

View Quoted Comment This. If you don’t want physical gifts, forgo the shower and spread your registry info via a website or word of mouth for the wedding itself. As a guest, I would probably decline an invite for an event like this since I would feel like I’m being used as a fundraiser (I personally never contribute to cash funds).

I have been to a shower where the bride asked that guests not bring gifts and there was not a registry. Most people ended up bringing a dessert or a card but some did bring gifts. She did not open the gifts people brought during the shower.
In contrast to what others believe, in my experience a shower is not about showering the bride with gifts, it's about showering the bride with love. Love is expressed by giving gifts, but also by bringing food, well wishes, advice, wisdom, company, etc.
I digress though because you are asking for gifts in the form of money. And there's nothing wrong with that. But I don't think you'll be able to stop people from bringing gifts. All you can do is put your registries out there. If I were invited, I'd probably put cash in a card for you to put toward your honeymoon fund.

I understand why you don’t want physical gifts and I’m not saying you need to create a registry, but we can’t control what others do. So there is no way to “ensure” guests only give cash. Hopefully most, if not all, will but as brides there is only so much we can control and I sometimes think we put too much pressure on ourselves to try and control other people’s choices and decisions.

Cash showers aren't really a thing. If your family insists on throwing you a shower and you don't have any physical items you would want to register for, something like a recipe shower could be a fun alternative. Every guest is asked to bring a recipe card of their favorite recipe in lieu of a gift so you both have some fun recipes to try out together.

View Quoted Comment Thank all! I think we will just call it a “bridal luncheon” so guests don’t associate the event with traditional physical gifts. We aren’t backing away from the all cash funds. I do strongly believe that if a guest can’t/refuses to accept the bride & groom’s requests here, they probably aren’t folks I would want to celebrate with anyway.


On our website, I have included clear text on the registry page that we have all we need and ask that guests contribute to our honeymoon fund instead! If there are additional ways to word this, or additional places to include this message, let me know your thoughts!

Similar situation. I didn’t want a shower but was gently guilted into it by my MIL. She was just so excited. But we’re already doing a honeyfund for the wedding and I didn’t want to make a registry since I can’t think of what to even add. She ended up deciding on a theme of “date night.” TBD what kind of gifts that yields.

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Random advice, we have a lot of what we need too. some of my circle believe there should be specific gifts so it wasn't a "fundraiser". We ended up putting a honeymoon fund, as well as things like "Dinner at ____", "Tickets for 2 to _____", "Paint class", etc. These funds go directly to us, and NOT to those specific things (so basically a honeymoon fund, but for specific amounts of money, and just titled differently). To the older generation it made it feel more personal than a honeymoon fund, and at the end of the day we can choose to go do those things or just use it for the honeymoon.

View Quoted Comment I love those ideas! We can definitely incorporate some of these on the registry!

View Quoted Comment I agree with this. If you set up only cash funds as gifts, we would likely decline the invitation because that is seen as impolite in our circles. Similarly, some guests will gift you physical things that you don’t want and can’t return anywhere if there is no physical registry and you need to thank them promptly and graciously. Also just because someone sets up an experiences registry with things specified, that doesn’t mean the couple will actually use those things with the cash given and guests know that. Those who regularly gift cash will do regardless, the same way that people who gift physical items will do so anyway. There’s no polite wording that will sway them to do otherwise.

View Quoted Comment That’s okay. Personally, if a guest could not respect the requests of myself and fiancé, regardless if they agree or not, we would prefer they do not attend our wedding events.