S1’s friends are starting to marry (in fact, S1 was recently engaged). I’m invited to a bridal shower, helping to host a couple’s shower and attending the wedding of a sweet girl whose twin was S1’s college roommate. How should I do the gifts? Gifts for the first two and money for the wedding? Start with smaller gifts and work up? Love the family. Our income is a good bit higher so I don’t want them to feel they have to match gifts, so maybe stay away from giving cash??? Please help. I haven’t attended many weddings since they became elaborate events!
Is the couple registered anywhere? I try to get an engagement gift off of the registry if they have one and then I give a check for the wedding. If you are getting two pre-wedding gifts I don’t think they both need to cost a lot.
Cash for the wedding. Shower gift from a registry, if there is one.
That is what I do…gift for showers and cash for weddings.
Part of the “entertainment” at showers seems to be opening presents, so I always buy a gift for those. I send a check for weddings
Cash is king. Accepted everywhere and allows the recipient to choose the best way to use it. All newly weds need cash.
^^^^ I view buying something from a registry selected by the couple as pretty much the equivalent of giving cash since you are giving them something they would otherwise want to purchase.
Odd man out here. For a wedding gift, we try to,give the couple something they will use a LOT…like everyday dishes, and flatware. For one couple, we gave all of the glassware on their registry…all of it…as a wedding gift…because we knew they would use that.
Shower gifts…we tend to be invited to showers for brides we know well. Sometimes we get things off the registry and sometimes not. Depends on the bride.
I never give cash. I’m old-fashioned and don’t come from a cash-giving tradition. I also haven’t been to a non-family wedding since the mid 80s. 
I haven’t been to a bridal shower in decades, either, but the norm was to give something more on the useful side at the shower and something bigger off the registry for the wedding. Registries tended to include only the “gracious living” kind of things, like china, silver, and glassware.
Now that registries more commonly include more general household things, those might be shower gifts and the “gracious living” stuff would be the wedding present. Or something that was expensive, like a Cuisinart.
Things are different for people from the cash-giving traditions. I don’t really understand those norms, although CC has been an education.
I never give cash either. Don’t like the way it feels. If there’s a registry I’ll generally get something from it. It happens I just was at a shower last weekend - the bride to be has lived with her husband to be for 25 years! I actually think it’s kind of sweet that they are finally making the commitment. We opened presents at the shower, but I didn’t want to get anything too pricey as we’d already gotten them something reasonably expensive from the list. (Invite suggested bar related stuff, but not at all written in stone.) In the end I got them a cheese plate and knives. Someone gave her a pizza stone, there were a couple of pieces of sexy lingerie from people who knew her a bit better than I do. Also a pillow which might have been on the registery. Some one gave wine from their home country. I think there were some cocktail glasses.