The Atlantic

When the Happy Couple Registers for Cash

As couples postpone getting married, some are forgoing old-fashioned wedding registries and instead just asking for money.
Source: Jean-Marc Giboux / AP

When David McGuiggan told his mother that he and his fiancée would be requesting cash gifts for their wedding last October, she was less than enthusiastic, he remembers. He got the impression that she found the practice uncouth and a little desperate. “For her generation, it was greedy, like you’re begging for money,” McGuiggan says. “Back then, you were gracious to receive three different irons, which really happened to my parents.”

“We don’t need three irons,” adds Meily Mendez, his now-wife. “We already have two.”

The couple had lived together for six years before getting hitched, and had already acquired all the irons, dinnerware, and bathroom towels they’d ever need. So instead of a traditional wedding registry—a wish list commonly composed of

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