Bad Manners and Brimstone

LW and her mom sent a gift for a wedding after they received the STD card. Wedding was changed from a big affair to backyard with a few in attendance. LW is suggesting the couple should return the gifts.

https://www.uexpress.com/ask-someone-elses-mom/2020/9/24/covid-caused-wedding-cancellation-makes-lw-wonder

Scrolling through the comments I didn't see where anyone agreed with the LW. But does anyone here support the LW's position?

I agree with BeagleMommy.  The Wedding ceremony is not the culmination of anything.  It’s simply a public recognition that a marriage has begun.

Gifts for a Wedding are traditionally things that the couple will be using in their married life.  Heck, we have a few things we received as Wedding gifts in 1983 that we still use several times a week.

 A truncated Wedding celebration due to health considerations is, in my opinion, not a reason to return gifts. 

The LW is being selfish and petulant. The HC didn't have much control of what amount of people could be in the facility during a *pandemic.* Insisting a gift be returned because you weren't able to attend through nobody's fault is, IMHO, very childish.

Along with the first line of the answer, the gift is a gift to the couple for their marriage, not a fee for a party.

oh, man--I'm so bummed out by the name of that column: Ask Someone Else's Mom

i wanted to start a one-person peaking agency to talk to middle-schoolers, high-schoolers, and college students about life and advice, and I was going to call it Someone Else's Mom.

But does anyone here support the LW's position?

I don't. A gift was sent because the person would have been invited. Through no fault of their own, the couple had to cancel the planned reception and cut the guest list for the backyard affair. Wanting the gift returned makes it look like you ONLY sent the gift because you were getting a nice meal. It would be hard enough for the bride and groom to have to give up their "dream wedding", expecting gifts to be returned just adds to their disappointment. People who care about the couple would simply sympathize with them.

I'm with everyone else here.  The idea that the couple ought to send the gift back rests on the assumption that wedding presents are essentially payment for a seat at the shindig, which is a horrid idea.

Odd, too, that the LW and her mother, neither of whom is particularly close to the bride either emotionally or by blood (second cousin) leapt in and bought 'one of the more expensive items on the registry'. I suspect darkly that they expected the wedding presents to be on display at the reception and wanted to impress everyone with their generosity.  Now that isn't going to happen, they're sorry they bought anything at all.

I'm with everyone else here.  The idea that the couple ought to send the gift back rests on the assumption that wedding presents are essentially payment for a seat at the shindig, which is a horrid idea.

Odd, too, that the LW and her mother, neither of whom is particularly close to the bride either emotionally or by blood (second cousin) leapt in and bought 'one of the more expensive items on the registry'. I suspect darkly that they expected the wedding presents to be on display at the reception and wanted to impress everyone with their generosity.  Now that isn't going to happen, they're sorry they bought anything at all.

I'll admit that a form of the bolded crossed my mind, I thought, "If it were for a bridal shower, they might have wanted credit." In my region, excepting my cousin, gifts aren't opened or displayed at the reception.  I still think the mention that they bought one of the more expensive gifts on the registry points to something. Would gifts be opened the morning after at a brunch? Would they mention what they bought at their table or to other guests?

I've thought about this thread and the overall lack of generosity a couple times. I wonder if there's something about living in the stress and anxiety of a pandemic that has some people's brains flipping to a scarcity mindset and becoming parsimonious without reason? (I realize some people are in worse financial conditions and have to belt tighten, I mean people whose income is largely unchanged and they're getting miserly.) Because the only thing different here is the LW is not attending the wedding. Like I said upthread, if anything, the LW has saved money, so it's not, rationally, about the money.  They're either considering the gift a ticket for a meal and entertainment, they want some sort of social recognition for the expensive gift, or they've gotten irrationally miserly.