Midwestern white trash = my whole family

I think the reason most people crave $$ is because they need to pay for the giant weddings that they couldn't afford to begin with.

I think my problem with it is that at most every wedding I've been to, it's expected that you "pay for your plate" which is often about $200/300 if not more. This drives me crazy. It is not up to me to pay for your wedding. I'd rather give a gift I can afford that they've indicated they want.

No. If we're going to buck tradition it just doesn't make sense to replace it with one that makes as little sense. The "alternative" to getting presents you don't need on your wedding isn't to get better presents. It's to recognize that the entire wedding industry is based on materialistic bullshit and two people can…

The only reasoning I can get behind is the practicality. That said, you can return things for store credit. Register at Target then return it all for gift cards. You're always going to need toilet paper and socks.

I knew a couple who set something up where you could select and pay for (or towards) a specific part of their honeymoon. Like snorkeling lessons or a dinner out! It was awesome and they had gifts that ranged from $10 to $600 so nobody felt like they couldn't afford to give them something.

I recently had the weirdest gift rebuff — not for a wedding, but a baby shower. I almost always give moms-to-be a prenatal massage. I'm a stomach sleeper and I cannot imagine how annoyed I will be when I spawn and get too big to sleep on my belly. Plus, you know, STRESS. Well, my gift (an envelope) was opened at…

I am sure someone brought this up, but if they are so strapped for cash, why are they having and paying for a wedding? If you can afford $15,000 for a wedding, then you don't need my money towards a down payment on a house. Just a thought.

If we're going to talk about how class enters into wedding gift giving, then let's make sure we do it properly: many people give gifts (even, gasp, off-registry gifts!) because actual gift-gifts can be found at a bargain, and they cannot afford to give a cash gift that they don't feel embarrassed by. A gift is a…

ha i just mentioned that in my post!

The best gifts we got for our wedding were cold, hard cash. Not that I didn't just love the random serving dish I'm pretty sure was regifted to us (it wasn't on the registry, that's for sure).

Why? What's the difference between saying "here is a list of gifts I have approved and would like you to maybe buy for me" and saying "you might as well give me that $50 you're going to spend on the bread maker that I didn't register for and won't use." How is one "tacky" but not the other?

Some friends used Honeyfund.com and I thought it was great! I liked knowing that I was making it possible for them to sip mojitos in Aculpulco. :-)

That's too bad.

Yes, but I get exactly what she means. At 52, I'm invisible to so many people, especially young men. Some of them seem kind of annoyed that I exist and that they have to deal with me even though I'm unfuckable. I can see their eyes flick over me and then boom - categorize me as useless to them, so they're a little…

The most charitable way to interpret what she said is that she was basically saying he needs to play the hand he was dealt. He's not going to be convincing as some "mad, bad, and dangerous to know" street kid any more than Andy Richter would. (And at the moment, it seems that the male singers who most successfully…

"And Royal Gynecologist Marcus Setchell actually gave up drinking at least a month before the baby came"

It might be time for Justin Theroux to step in and start choosing Aniston's film roles for her...she seems incapable of being in good movies.

A girl showed up at the last big party I went to, wearing the same dress I had on. I told her she had great taste, insisted we take a picture together, then made my husband tell me I was a thousand times cuter. Also, I made fun of her shoes.