Wedding Gifts Compete with Homes and Cash

The Wall St. Journal shares that more couples are buying a house before getting married (and hosting a wedding). In 2013, 381,000 unmarried couples bought a house, while in 2023, 555,000 did—a 46% increase. A wedding’s cost may be similar to the down payment on a home, and couples facing sky-high housing prices can’t have their pie and eat it, too. The article shares that home prices have increased 44% from 2019 to 2023 (and wedding costs have risen 25% during that time).

The article shares that even couples that do get married before buying a house are asking for cash contributions to a home vs. fine china. (Amy Stavis, in her Letter to the Editor column, spoke about this trend in the most recent Tableware Today issue.)

People are getting married at an older age and buying a home at an older age. This impacts the registry business because older people often already have all the home goods, kitchen accessories, and dining plates they need—thereby nulling the need for a traditional wedding registry gift list. 

Our goal at Shop Local is to give gift givers choice. Our wedding registry list always allows a gift giver to give a gift card (in addition to physical products, i.e. plates and cups, etc.). We could add as a gift option a cash choice. This raises the possibility, though, that gift givers could choose giving the cash gift over the gift card choice (which is not in the merchant’s interest). To alleviate this, the merchant could sweeten the allure of a gift card by saying the gift card comes with a 10% bonus. 

Read the full article: 
https://www.wsj.com/personal-finance/unmarried-homeowners-mortgages-801ff086?st=LS9mL3&reflink=mobilewebshare_permalink

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WSJ marriage trends home ownership trends cash gift down payment

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