How much to give as a wedding gift

The calculator starts from one adult's gift at the whole wedding, a range that depends on your relationship to the couple. It then scales that range for your role, for how much of the wedding you attend and for the people giving with you. Finally it rounds both ends to the nearest £10, since a card holds round sums, and shows the middle of the range as a typical figure.

The page opens on a friend who comes alone for the whole wedding. That range is £50 to £80, with £70 in the middle. Choosing a sibling moves it to £80 to £100.

Each result also names whose figure the range is, a survey answer or the calculator's own reading, and compares its top with the giver's allowance for the tax on gifts. Below the result every relationship is set out for the same situation as a guest, so a cousin's and a colleague's cash gift read side by side.

How much a guest gives follows how close they are to the couple. YouGov's Big Survey on Weddings, with fieldwork from 7 to 9 August 2026 among 1,784 UK adults, asked respondents to name the right sum. For a couple people know well, the answer was £76 to £100, and for one they are less close to, £26 to £50.

The calculator gives the first range to a brother or sister, an aunt or uncle, a godparent and a close friend, and the second to a colleague or an acquaintance. A cousin or a friend sits between the two at £50 to £75 per adult, a midpoint set by the calculator rather than a survey answer. Rounded to £10, that is £80 to £100 from a sibling, £50 to £80 from a friend and £30 to £50 from a colleague. None of it is an obligation: the right amount is the one the giver can afford.

The immediate family closest to the couple, a parent or a grandparent of one of them, gets no range. None of the sources gives an amount for them, so the calculator says so instead of guessing and shows only the tax side, where their allowance is the largest. A distant friend falls in the lower band with acquaintances.

About 50% of a day guest's amount, as the calculator reads it. A friend invited to the evening only comes to £30 to £40, against £50 to £80 for the full day. Prezola, the gift list company, says day guests spend a little more than evening guests but gives no figure, so the share is the calculator's choice.

A day guest is invited to the ceremony, the meal and the party, while an evening guest joins for the party later on. A colleague invited for the evening comes to £10 to £30. The cost of a place at the meal is asked only for a day guest.

A plus one, the partner a guest is invited with, turns the pair into a couple in the calculator, which changes the sum as the next section shows. In YouGov's 2026 survey, most respondents called it unacceptable for a couple to ban plus-ones.

A guest who is invited but cannot go is also given 50% of the whole-day amount. That share is again set by the calculator, since no UK source in this guide gives a figure for it.

A couple giving one card is counted as 1.75 adults, more than one guest but less than two. No UK source gives a figure for couples, so the multiplier is an assumption of the calculator.

A close friend and a partner come to £130 to £180, with £160 in the middle, and the result also shows one adult's share beside the total. A pair of friends of the couple comes to £90 to £130.

Each child coming with them adds 50% of one adult's amount, another assumption with no source behind it. A family of four who are friends of the couple, two adults and two children, comes to £140 to £210. The same YouGov survey found most people accept a couple banning young children from the day.

Members of the wedding party give a little more in the calculator, which raises one adult's range by 25%. Prezola's guide says family, close friends and the wedding party tend to spend more than other guests. It gives no figure, so the step is the calculator's estimate.

A close friend who is the best man or maid of honour comes to £100 to £130, and a friend who is a bridesmaid to £60 to £90. A brother or sister in the role gets the same £100 to £130, because both start from YouGov's answer for a couple the guest knows well.

The role brings costs the calculator does not count, such as an outfit or a stag or hen do. The best man's speech is part of the day as well, and the speech time calculator works out how long a written speech runs when read aloud. For the reception, the shoe game in who is most likely to has a deck of wedding questions.

In Prezola's own data, money outweighs presents. The gift list company reports an average cash gift of £102, up from £79 in its earlier figures, and £87 for a present bought from a list. It puts the usual span for cash at £50 to £500.

Asking for cash is acceptable to most of the adults YouGov polled in 2026. Whether a couple keeps a gift list, called a wedding registry in the United States, or would rather have money is usually set out with the wedding invitation.

A honeymoon fund, a wishing well for cards at the reception and a gift voucher are all money in another form. The calculator reads each of them as a cash gift of the same size, and a present chosen from the list can be weighed against the same range.

Bridebook's 2026 catering figures put venue and catering at about £117 a head. Whether a gift should cover your plate, meaning the cost per guest of the meal, is a common question. None of the UK sources here treats it as a rule.

So the calculator shows that cost beside the range rather than adding it. Typing the cost of one adult's place makes it count the places of everyone giving, with each child at 50% of a place. A friend alone at a place costing £100 keeps £50 to £80, and the result says the range is below the places.

When the middle of the range is above the cost, a bar splits the gift into the places and the rest. A sibling at a place costing £80 sees £90 in the middle: £80 for the place and £10 beyond it.

The other side is the cost of attending. Travel, an overnight stay or a destination wedding abroad all add to what the day costs a guest. No input covers them, so that weighing is left to the giver.

Up to £5,000 each, free of Inheritance Tax, while a grandparent may give up to £2,500. GOV.UK sets out these wedding allowances, and anyone else may give up to £1,000.

The rule is section 22 of the Inheritance Tax Act 1984, which exempts gifts in consideration of marriage or civil partnership. It counts per giver and per marriage, so two parents each have their own allowance. HMRC's manual describes the allowance as covering gifts made on or shortly before the wedding or civil partnership.

GOV.UK says the wedding allowance can be combined with any other allowance except the small gift allowance of £250. A parent who also uses the £3,000 annual exemption can give £8,000 free of the tax, and an unused annual exemption can be carried forward one year.

The calculator compares the top of its range with the allowance of each giver, so two guests giving together are each counted with half the card. No range it suggests passes the £1,000 that applies beyond parents and grandparents. For those two relations it shows the allowance alone, since it gives them no range.

No law or official body in the UK says how much a wedding guest gives, and gift etiquette has no rulebook, so every amount here is someone's figure. The survey bands come from YouGov, the cash and present averages from Prezola's gift list data and the cost of a place from Bridebook.

The rest is the wedding gift calculator's own reading, set out so it can be checked. That covers the band for cousins and friends, 1.75 adults for a couple and 50% for each child. It also covers 50% for an evening guest or one who cannot go, and 25% more for the wedding party. The tax allowances are the only official figures, from GOV.UK, the Act and HMRC.

Sums for a few situations are worked through under checked against known answers. The figures were checked on 16 October 2026 and are due for a recheck by 30 April 2027. No input covers a budget, a region or the size of the wedding, and the four nations share one set of amounts, since no source separates them.