Push the blenders, cutlery sets and fine china aside.
Brides and grooms are more frequently adding a house fund to their wedding registries to raise cash to buy a home. Once a way to accrue household items, the wedding registry now enables newlyweds to jump-start their future together with what is likely to be one of the largest purchases of their lives.
In 2024, according to a survey conducted by the wedding website Zola, 87 percent of couples were planning to include cash funds as an option on their wedding registry. According to the Knot, another online wedding resource, the share of couples including a home fund on their registries has increased 62 percent since 2018. The house fund was the second-most-popular fund on the Knot this year after a honeymoon fund.
“It’s certainly on the up and up,” said Esther Lee, the deputy editor of the Knot. “And it’s because you’re seeing that millennials and Gen Z, they want a home, and this is just yet another avenue for purchasing a home.”
House funds can give couples an edge in a crushing housing market where homeownership has become increasingly inaccessible. Interest rates have dropped from previous highs, but many homeowners, hesitant to forgo lower rates, aren’t moving, creating a “rate-lock effect” that impedes first-time home buyers.
When Gigi Blanco and E.J. Kelley married in 2022, they included a house fund on their registry and received $20,000, said Ms. Blanco, 32, a public relations director at Douglas Elliman, a real estate company. The money helped them buy and close on a cozy, farmhouse-style three-bedroom home in Bedford Hills, N.Y.
They were able to close on the house “without liquidating ourselves,” said Mr. Kelley, 37, who works in real estate marketing and brand strategy. They closed on the house, priced at $689,000, for $725,000 after a bidding war and other negotiations, becoming first-time home buyers.
“It gave us kind of like the cushion and comfort to make an offer. And then I feel like it helped with all of those early repairs and renovations that we did,” Ms. Blanco said. “It’s so cool to think that all of our guests kind of helped us get to this point, versus getting a set of towels or, like, china.”
Though asking for money as a gift has long been considered improper etiquette among many Americans, Allison Cullman, the vice president of brand marketing and strategy at Zola, said it was “becoming less taboo.” In some cultures, money is considered not only an acceptable gift but a tradition.
The Zola survey found that couples had plans to request funds through their registries for other big-ticket items, such as honeymoons, fertility treatments and student loan payments.
Zola suggests that couples asking for money be specific, mentioning that it is going toward a down payment or for renovations. “I think people are more inclined to give a gift to something specific where they’ll be able to see the outcome of it versus when it feels like an abyss,” Ms. Cullman said.
As for the guests, “the whole idea of giving a wedding gift is to invest and celebrate someone’s future together as a couple,” she said. “And I don’t think there’s any more profound way to do that than contributing to the new home that they would share together.”
Colin Murphy, who is marrying next summer, said his mother was concerned that asking for money would be rude, so he was including household items on the registry, such as glassware, kitchen supplies and towels.
But he and his fiancé still decided to create a fund so they could begin saving toward a home. “The goal is to have something that we can have as a larger nest egg to invest some of it, to make a little more out of it,” said Mr. Murphy, 29, who lives in Harlem and is the U.S. in-store sales manager for the Joe & the Juice beverage chain.
He said they were looking to buy outside the city in about two years, possibly in New Jersey, where his fiancé is from. Mr. Murphy said his dream was to buy in the city but that it’s “not affordable by any means.”
Orlane Salvant and her husband are on a similar schedule. The couple married in June and received around $10,000 from their registry’s house fund. Ms. Salvant, a 24-year-old social worker, said she hoped they could save more money to buy a home in Massachusetts, where her family lives, or in New Jersey, but she is in no rush.
“We want to make sure that it does check all of our boxes, so if that means renting for a longer time and continuing to save, then that’s OK,” said Ms. Salvant, who lives in Jersey City, N.J., and whose Haitian heritage is amenable to cash gifts for weddings.
Emily Swenson and Katie Hildebrand, who married in June, accelerated their timeline for buying after the landlord of their house in Kansas City, Mo., extended their month-to-month lease to only two more months.
They received around $7,800 from wedding guests for their house fund. Ms. Swenson and Ms. Hildebrand gave guests options: Contribute to their general house fund or donate $157, the average price per square foot for a home in Kansas City, by Ms. Swenson’s calculations. With their savings, they were able to purchase a three-bedroom home with ample outdoor space for their dogs. They have used the house fund to pay for the first few months of their mortgage.
“Our mortgage is only $200 more than our rent was, and we’re in a way better area and have a much nicer house,” said Ms. Swenson, 34, who works in nonprofit fund-raising. “I think it’s just a massive improvement, and getting that help from people really has made the transition so much more comfortable.”
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