Couples turn wedding gifts into home investments amid rising housing costs

Forget about fine china or a 10-speed mixer—more couples are now asking wedding guests to contribute to home funds as gifts.

Zola's 2024 wedding trends report surveyed 7,000 couples planning to get married this year and found that 87% include cash funds in their wedding registry. Of those, around 37% said they’d be using the money to put a down payment on a house. Purchasing a home was the second most popular use of funds behind paying for a honeymoon or travel.

Using cash gifts to fund home purchases is a more recent phenomenon, but it makes sense given the high cost of housing today. Plus, couples are getting married later in life. In the 1960s, the median age of marriage for women was 20 and for men 22. Now, the average age of marriage for women is 28.6, and the average age for men is 30.5.

Around 76% of couples that get married are already cohabitating before they wed and likely have many essentials typically found on a wedding registry. But with the median price of a home in the U.S. around $412,000 and mortgage rates at around 6%, homeownership feels increasingly out of reach for those couples.

Indeed, a 2024 survey found that around 60% of Gen Zers worry they’ll never own a home. Another survey found that around 25% of millennials fear the same.

It’s why couples are choosing cash gifts over towel sets.

Couples considering a cash fund for their wedding may worry about how exactly to ask for money, especially among more traditional relatives and friends with whom there remains a stigma around asking directly for cash.

Some commenters on a WeddingWire thread about wedding presents balked at the idea of asking for cash gifts. One pointed out that it could be embarrassing for guests who don’t have much cash to donate funds directly rather than being able to purchase a small, more affordable gift.

Yet "a 2023 Realtor.com® survey of around 2,300 people with wedding registries found that 85% would have preferred to receive money toward a down payment on a home rather than a physical gift." Eighty percent of respondents said that if they did it over again, they would have added an option for guests to give cash to use toward "a down payment or closing costs."

And "it’s a move that’s increasingly accepted among wedding guests: The same Realtor.com survey found that" "30% of people are open to giving money toward" "a home as" "a wedding gift."

Some couples have used poems to request cash gifts, though some guests have reported feeling “the ick” over rhyming requests.

If you’re thinking about asking for help with "a down payment as" "a part of your wedding registry," there are several approaches you can take. For one, you can simply not offer any other items on your registry encouraging people to provide "a cash gift instead." Registry sites like Zola and The Knot allow couples to create cash funds and designate specifically how the money will be used. Just be aware that these sites often take "a small cut" "of the funds" "to cover transaction costs."

Because of that it might make sense for you to forego "a cash registry" and simply let people know via your invitation or website that you’d prefer cash gifts.

And regardless of whether you register online avoid setting "a minimum donation amount." For some people $50 is prohibitively expensive.

And don’t forget to thank your guests for their contributions letting them know specific ways that you were able to put their money to good use.