Top 10 French Wedding Gifts.
France requires a civil ceremony at the mairie before any religious one, so guests often attend two events, and frequently a third, the vin d’honneur, to which more people are invited than to dinner. That tiering is the thing to understand, because how much you give depends entirely on which of the three you were asked to.
What not to give
Read this before the list below. These are not preferences — several are genuine offences, and they are the part most gift guides leave out.
- Chrysanthemums — absolutely not They are for Toussaint and for cemeteries. One of the strongest floral taboos in Europe, and the single easiest way for a foreign guest to cause offence.
- Assuming the church collection goes to the couple At a Catholic nuptial Mass there is a quête, generally after the prière universelle. It is not obligatory, €5–20 is the suggested amount, and the money goes to the parish or to charity. In Brittany, confusingly, "la quête des mariés" is a separate collection, usually staged as a comic performance, and that one does go to the couple.
- May, in Provence "Noces de mai, noces mortelles." The Roman logic is that May sat between April, which belonged to Venus, and June, which belonged to Juno, both favourable, while May itself was given over to purification rites and mourning for Juno’s priestess. Ovid records it in the Fasti.
- An unsigned envelope The urne moves during the day — it starts at the vin d’honneur and is carried to the dinner venue, because the two guest lists differ. Couples delegate it to a témoin for exactly this reason. An anonymous envelope in a box that has been through two venues is a thank-you note that never gets written.
The ten
- 01
A contribution to the cagnotte
The online pot — Leetchi, Le Pot Commun, MilleMercis, Un Grand Jour, Lydia. Check the fee before you send: MilleMercis takes around 1.4 per cent plus €1, and taking a pot out as a bank transfer can cost several per cent.
- 02
Cash in the urne
The decorated box at the reception, also called a boîte à bonheur. Envelopes and cards are set out beside it — write your name on yours, or the couple cannot thank you.
- 03
Une coupe de mariage
A two-handled silver cup the couple drinks from together. The Louvre holds a documented example: silver, 1701–02, by the goldsmith Joseph Lucas of Saint-Pol-de-Léon in Brittany, 5.2 cm high and 11 cm across, engraved "F.MORVAN" on the rim. Associated with Burgundy, and kept for life.
- 04
Une jeannette savoyarde
A small gold or silver cross from Savoie, given during the engagement as a token of attachment and spiritual commitment.
- 05
An engraved Savoyard bell
A cow bell carrying the wedding date and the couple’s initials, hung on the door of the marital home, or, traditionally, put on the lead animal of the herd for luck.
- 06
Dragées
An odd number, most often five. The five vows they stand for differ between sources, which is worth knowing before you assert them to anyone French.
- 07
Champagne from a récoltant-manipulant
A grower who makes wine from their own fruit, rather than a big house. It shows you thought about it.
- 08
Limoges porcelain
The traditional French wedding porcelain, and still the safe answer.
- 09
Linen from the Vosges
Table and bed linen still woven in France. Practical and quietly expensive.
- 10
Le Creuset or Staub cast iron
French, used daily, and outlives the marriage in the statistical sense at least.
If you are giving money
The urne on the day, or a transfer to the cagnotte beforehand. Slate puts the consensus baseline at €100 a head, with close family and best friends at €100–250 and casual acquaintances at €50–100 — and notes that a €20 gift passed without complaint. Guests invited only to the vin d’honneur give €20–50. That tiering probably reconciles the contradiction you will run into online, where some French sources put the urne average at €30–50 a head and others at €100: the first figure is the vin-d’honneur crowd, the second is the full-day one. Do not repeat the "60 per cent of French couples now use a cagnotte" statistic — it circulates in two mutually inconsistent versions, both on content farms.
La jarretière — the garter auction
- The bride sits, and the bidding opens.
- The men bid to have her dress raised, centimetre by centimetre, towards the garter.
- The women bid to have it lowered again.
- Money is collected in a corbeille as it is bid.
- If a man wins the final bid he removes the garter himself and keeps it. If a woman wins, it stays where it is.
- The proceeds fund the couple’s honeymoon.
The stated origin is medieval: couples of limited means topped up the bride’s dowry by auctioning her garter. Modernised variants exist. I could find no French source describing the custom as declining or contested, which surprised me, so do not assume it has quietly died out.
What you will read that is wrong
- The carnation taboo is not a wedding rule It is real and its origin is specific: nineteenth-century actors held short renewable contracts, and a director signalled non-renewal by presenting the cheapest bouquet available, which was carnations. Performers still refuse them, and white carnations are a standard French funeral flower. But no French source applies any of that to weddings.
- Lent and Advent weddings are permitted French dioceses generally take a restrictive line and will ask you to moderate the festivities, but the only absolute prohibition is the Easter Triduum — Holy Thursday to the Easter Vigil. Historically Lent was barred, and dispensable even then.
- Cash is not vulgar in France Vendor copy repeats that money is taboo and that couples fear looking intéressés. National press coverage does not say this; the only disparaging line in it is one guest’s personal opinion. The discomfort is about asking, not about giving, which is precisely the problem the cagnotte solved by moving the ask off the invitation and onto a platform.
- The corbeille de mariage is a dead custom It appeared in the eighteenth century for the gifts a fiancé presented to his bride in a square satin-lined basket — square, so the fabrics would not crease. Contents ran to jewellery, lace passed down from the mother-in-law, furs, ribbons, a purse of gold coins, fans and a prayer book, and its value was conventionally five per cent of the dowry. Today the phrase survives only as an idiom meaning everything the couple received. Anyone advising you to give one is describing a museum.
Written as common practice. Regional and family variation is enormous — if you are close enough to the couple to ask, ask. Nobody has ever been offended by the question.