My coworker invited me to her wedding and I RSVP’d without asking any questions. Her wedding is the 11th.
Our boss just told us, the foreigners, that it’s customary to give 30,000 yen as a gift. I cannot afford this. It’s the exact start of
a week off for us and money is already tight.
How bad would it be if I give her 20k? Or even 15? I can’t cancel and I know I can’t show up with nothing, we aren’t close to begin with and don’t talk at all outside of work but it’s her wedding and I want to be respectful without being broke the rest of the month
10 comments
If you can afford the 20k then 20k is fine
One of the reasons why it’s 30,000 yen is 3 x 10,000 yen bills mean 3 cannot be evenly divided by 2. It’s considered bad luck to give bills that can be evenly divided by 2. So if you don’t give 30,000, the next rung up is 50,000 and rung below is 10,000 or 15,000 is what I’ve heard.
5k bills x3 would be alright.
You can give 10,000 or 20,000, but if you’re giving 20,000 get one 10,000 bill and two 5,000 bills so that it can’t be divided evenly. If you want to do it right, you’ll go to the bank and get brand new bills from the counter, and then put into a special wedding envelope. Any stationary store will have these envelopes, and you can find guides online for how to write the amount and your name on the envelope.
That being said, as others have mentioned 30,000 is pretty standard if you’re a working person, and usually food and drink are provided by the couple on the assumption that guests will be giving that amount of money. If it’s viable for you to not attend the wedding that may be the better choice instead of shorting the cash. As mentioned above, it’s typical to write your name on the envelope, or even have someone supervising the gift table making note of what everyone gives, so it won’t be anonymous.
give 10000, it should be odd ten thousand yens so couple won’t be divided
If you cannot give 30,000 man then cancel immediately
the wedding place charges based on knowing guests will give that or more. The dish, gift etc they give you will cost just about that much
There the logic the average price for wedding food drinks hall and such per person is about 21k yen. Then the extras like gifts, presents etc for you as a guest is about 7k. So you coming will cost them about 30k yen.
So technically everyone sort of agrees to 30k yen as gifts.
Now due to tradition they prefer non equal numbers so there no logical “spliting” this is why 30k and 50k became the norm. They also avoid 4 because death and 9 because suffering. The “extremely good gift” is 80k because as they say “auspicious” aka 8 is a lucky number.
https://zexy.net/mar/manual/guest_gosyugi/chapter5.html
There an article asking exactly what you are. Is it okay to give 20k.
It’s okay if you’re in your 20s, have a short working history and I’d add here you are a foreigner.
The say it’s not okay if you’re over 30.
Also if you cancel you’re kind of expected to give at least 5~10k.
It is a tough one but I agree that 3 bills for 20000 or 15000 is good.
How close are you to your co-worker? Once the entire event is over and done with are you comfortable when she returns to work to take her aside and privately offering apologies for the smaller than usual gift? If she knows you can’t really afford it she will also feel remorse but she knows how things work in Japan and these social obligations can be very stressful.
Why would somebody you are not close with invite you to her wedding?
Just try to cancel
How much you give depend on how close you are to the person. For a coworker, 15k in 5k bills is fine.
30k is the starting “price” for friends and family.