Thank You Gift Ideas for Parents of the Bride and Groom

Thank you gift ideas for parents of the bride and groom

A thank you gift for parents of the bride usually costs $100 to $250 per couple in Australia, and the most-loved options are personal rather than expensive — a framed photo, an engraved keepsake, a dinner or experience voucher, or a handwritten letter read aloud on the day. There's no etiquette rule that says you have to give one at all, but most Australian couples do, because by the time the wedding arrives both sets of parents have usually put in money, time or both.

That's the short answer. The longer one is about balance: matching the two sides so nobody feels short-changed, deciding whether to give before the ceremony or after the honeymoon, and working out what to do when your budget has already been stretched thin by the day itself.

This guide covers what to spend, gift ideas for each parent and parent-in-law, how to thank parents at a wedding when there's no money left in the budget, and how to split a bigger family gift with your siblings. If your parents are chipping in financially, our guide to parents' wedding contributions in Australia is worth a read alongside this one.

Last updated: October 2026.

Key takeaways

• A thank you gift for parents of the bride typically costs $100–$250 per couple. Sentiment matters more than the price tag.
• Match the value on both sides. Whatever you spend on the bride's parents, spend roughly the same on the groom's parents — unequal gifts are the single most common source of hurt feelings.
• Parent gifts are not compulsory. No recognised etiquette guide requires them, so a heartfelt letter and a moment in your speech is a complete gift on its own.
• Give the gift the morning of the wedding or at the rehearsal dinner. That's when it still feels like part of the day, rather than an afterthought weeks later.
• Step-parents and grandparents count too. Plan for $80–$150 for step-parents and $50–$120 for grandparents if you're including them.
• Siblings pooling one gift goes further than three separate ones. Across the funded group collections on PocketWell, the median page draws about 13 contributors and lands around $570 — far more than any one person would give alone.
• The written message is the part people keep. Across 2,471 completed gifts on PocketWell wedding and honeymoon-fund pages, 90% came with a written note attached.
• A wishing well reduces what parents have to cover. Australian weddings now average $38,252, and couples typically finish 23% over their original budget, so money collected from guests takes real pressure off the family.

On this page

• How much should you spend on a thank you gift for parents of the bride?
• What are the best thank you gift ideas for the mother of the bride?
• What's a good gift for the groom's parents?
• Should a wedding gift for parents be equal on both sides?
• How to thank parents at a wedding without spending money
• When should you give your parents their thank you gift?
• How do you split a parents' gift with your siblings?
• What should you write in a thank you card to your parents?
• How a wishing well takes pressure off your parents
• Frequently asked questions

How much should you spend on a thank you gift for parents of the bride?

Most Australian couples spend $100 to $250 per parent couple on a wedding thank you gift. The figure flexes with your own budget and with how much each side has put into the day — not with what you think the other family is spending.

Here's the starting point most couples work from:

Methodology: these ranges reflect what Australian couples commonly report spending, read against the gifting patterns we see across PocketWell wedding and honeymoon-fund pages and against the Easy Weddings 11th Annual Australian Wedding Industry Report, which puts the 2026 national average wedding at $38,252 — up 8% year on year, with couples finishing about 23% over their initial budget. PocketWell doesn't record a guest's relationship to the couple, so we can't label any gift as "from the parents"; what we can see is the shape of the top end of giving, which is covered below.

One useful anchor from our own data: across 2,471 completed gifts on wedding and honeymoon-fund pages, the median gift is $200, the 90th percentile sits at $500, about 14% of gifts are $500 or more, and roughly 4% are $1,000 or more. That top tier is where immediate family — including parents — generally sits. If your parents gave at that level, a $150 keepsake is not meant to be a like-for-like trade. It's a thank you, not a repayment.

Set the parent-gift figure before you book the florist, not after. Thank-you gifts are almost always the line item that gets squeezed last, which is exactly why they end up rushed.

What are the best thank you gift ideas for the mother of the bride?

The best thank you gift for mother of the bride is something that references the wedding itself or the years before it — not a generic present she could have bought herself. Specificity is the whole trick.

Ideas that consistently land well with Australian couples:

1. A framed photo of her and you — not a wedding photo, an older one. A print from her own wedding day next to yours is a lovely pairing.
2. A letter, handwritten and sealed, delivered the morning of the wedding. This is the one most mothers keep in a drawer for twenty years.
3. An engraved piece of jewellery with the wedding date, her initials or a short line from your vows.
4. A recipe book of family dishes, collected from her and from both grandmothers, printed and bound.
5. A restaurant or day-spa voucher for after the wedding, when the planning is finally over and she can exhale.
6. A photo book of the planning year — the dress fitting, the venue visits, the cake tasting. She was at all of it.
7. A contribution toward something she's been putting off — a weekend away, a theatre season, a camera.
8. A bouquet from your own ceremony flowers, repurposed and delivered to her the next day.
9. A keepsake box for cards, menus and the order of service from the day.
10. A named moment in your speech, planned in advance so you actually say it rather than forgetting in the nerves.

If the mother of the bride has done most of the organising, pair the gift with something that acknowledges that specifically — a line in the speech about the spreadsheet, the phone calls, the seating plan she redrew four times.

What's a good gift for the groom's parents?

A good gift for the groom's parents follows the same logic as the bride's side: personal, wedding-anchored, and equal in value — but it shouldn't be an identical copy. Two matching engraved frames can read as a job ticked off rather than a thank you.

Pairings that work well:

• His parents — a framed photo of him as a child beside one from the wedding day; a bottle of something from his birth year; a print of the venue.
• Mother of the groom — jewellery with the wedding date, a photo book of him growing up, a voucher for something she enjoys on her own.
• Father of the groom — an engraved hip flask or watch strap, a round of golf, a shared whisky or wine tasting booked for after the honeymoon.
• Both together — a weekend away, a portrait sitting, or a contribution toward a trip they've been talking about for years.

If you're marrying into a family you're still getting to know, ask your partner what each parent actually likes before you shop. A gift chosen from the inside always reads better than one chosen from a list.

One thing to avoid: gifts that only make sense to one side of the family. An in-joke keepsake for your own parents and a generic candle for your in-laws is the kind of mismatch people notice without ever mentioning it.

Should a wedding gift for parents be equal on both sides?

Yes — keep the value roughly equal, even when the financial contributions weren't. This is the part couples most often get wrong, and it's rarely about money. It's about what the difference signals.

The common trap: one set of parents paid for the venue, the other couldn't contribute, so the couple spends $400 on one gift and $120 on the other. The parents who gave less money almost always feel the gap, and the parents who gave more rarely wanted a bigger gift in return.

Three rules that keep it clean:

• Equal value, different gifts. Spend the same, choose differently.
• Thank the contribution separately. A large financial gift deserves its own acknowledgement — in your speech, in a card, in a phone call — not a bigger parcel.
• Decide the budget as a couple, in one sitting. Doing each side separately is how the gap opens up in the first place.

Where the sides genuinely differ in effort — one parent hosted forty people at the rehearsal dinner, the other flew in the night before — reflect that in the words, not the receipt.

How to thank parents at a wedding without spending money

If the budget's gone, a speech, a letter and a moment on the day are a complete thank you — no purchase needed. The etiquette position on parent gifts is that they're customary, not required, so there's nothing to apologise for.

Ways to thank parents at a wedding that cost nothing:

• Name them in the speech, specifically. Not "thanks to both sets of parents" — say what they actually did.
• A reserved seat and a named role. Walking you down the aisle, a reading, a toast, lighting a candle.
• A handwritten letter delivered the morning of the wedding. Posted or hand-delivered, read in private before the day starts.
• A dance. A short father-daughter or mother-son song is a gift in itself.
• A photo together, planned into the shot list so it doesn't get lost in the rush.
• A line in the order of service acknowledging them by name.
• A phone call a week later, once the dust has settled, just to say it again.

Our thank you message generator will give you a starting draft if you're stuck on the wording — then make it yours, because the specific details are what make it land.

When should you give your parents their thank you gift?

The best time to give parents their thank you gift is the morning of the wedding or at the rehearsal dinner the night before. Both moments are quiet enough for the gift to actually register, and they happen while the day still feels shared rather than finished.

Your options, ranked by how well they tend to work:

Timing matters for guest thank-yous too. Across our wedding and honeymoon-fund pages, the median gift arrives just one day before the wedding date, and about 16% of gifts land after the day has already happened — so your thank-you list isn't final on the Monday morning. Our guide on when to send wedding thank you cards covers the sensible window.

How do you split a parents' gift with your siblings?

Pooling one gift between siblings is almost always better than three separate presents — you get one meaningful thing instead of three medium ones. This is what the gifting world calls group-gift pooling: several people contributing to a single pot so the combined gift reaches a level nobody could manage alone.

It works especially well for milestone thank-yous — a trip, a portrait sitting, a significant piece of jewellery. The pattern we see in our own data backs it up: across the funded group collections on PocketWell, the median page draws about 13 contributors and collects around $570, with a median individual contribution of $50. Thirteen people giving $50 buys something quite different from one person giving $50.

How to run it without chasing anyone for cash:

1. Agree the gift first, the amount second. "A weekend in the Hunter Valley" is easier to rally people around than "everyone put in $80".
2. Set a per-person suggestion, not a demand. Make it clear that less is fine.
3. Use one link instead of a group chat. Set up a single online collection, share it with the siblings and cousins, and let everyone pay from their phone.
4. Give a deadline that sits before the wedding, not on the day.
5. Put all the names on the card, including whoever gave the smallest amount.

Organising a family gift for your parents? Start a group collection — one link, everyone chips in, and nobody's holding a pile of cash on the day.

What should you write in a thank you card to your parents?

Open with the specific thing they did, not the word "thank you". A card that starts "Thank you for everything" could have been written to anyone; a card that starts "You redrew that seating plan four times and never once complained" could only have been written to one person.

A simple structure that works:

• One specific thing they did for the wedding or in the lead-up.
• One thing they taught you that showed up in the day — how to host, how to be married, how to show up for people.
• What comes next. A line about them in your life as a married couple.
• A plain closing. "We love you. Thank you for all of it."

Keep it short. Four sentences in your own voice beats a page of borrowed phrasing. If you'd like examples to work from, our guide to wedding thank you card wording for money gifts has templates you can adapt for parents who contributed financially.

How a wishing well takes pressure off your parents

The most practical thank you gift for parents of the bride is often a wedding they didn't have to fund. A wishing well — an online page where guests send money instead of a physical present — is how a lot of Australian couples close the gap between their budget and the real cost.

A few terms worth knowing:

• Contribution gifting — guests give an amount of their choosing toward one pot, rather than buying items from a list.
• Registry-free wedding — no department-store registry at all; money toward the honeymoon, a home deposit or the day itself.
• QR-code activation — a printed code on the invitation or a reception sign that opens your gift page on a guest's phone in one tap.

There are now around 118,804 marriages registered in Australia each year, according to the ABS Marriages and Divorces release, and a growing share of those couples skip the registry entirely.

One operator note from running the platform: wedding and honeymoon-fund pages are consistently our largest category by gift volume, and pages that include a short written note from the couple do noticeably better — of 597 wedding and honeymoon-fund pages, 54% of those with a welcome message received at least one gift, versus 27% of those without. A few sentences explaining why you're collecting is the highest-return thing you can do to your page.

On the money side: PocketWell is free for hosts. There are no setup fees and no subscriptions, and hosts receive 100% of the gift amount — guests cover a 3.5% platform fee plus standard payment processing, shown before they pay. Payouts run weekly on Tuesdays through Stripe, with most arriving one to three business days later; the first payout takes five to seven business days while Stripe completes verification. The PocketWell FAQ has the full detail on fees, payouts and security.

If the honeymoon is the thing your parents keep offering to help with, a dedicated honeymoon fund is often an easier ask than a general wishing well — guests like knowing exactly what they're funding. Couples in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane lean this way most, where venue costs leave the least room in the budget.

Frequently asked questions

Q: Do you have to give a thank you gift to the parents of the bride and groom?

A: No — parent thank-you gifts are customary in Australia but not required by any etiquette standard. Most couples give something because both sets of parents have usually contributed money, time or help in the lead-up, and a gift is a natural way to acknowledge that. But a handwritten letter, a named moment in your speech and a genuine conversation after the day are a complete thank you on their own. If your budget is already spent, give words rather than going into debt for a parcel. Parents are, almost without exception, more interested in being thanked properly than in receiving an object.

Q: How much should you spend on a thank you gift for parents of the bride?

A: Most Australian couples spend $100–$250 per parent couple. Where you land depends on your own budget rather than on what each side contributed — a thank you gift isn't a repayment. If both sets of parents funded a large share of the day, some couples go to $250–$400 or pool a family gift with siblings to reach something more significant. If money's tight, $50 on a beautifully framed print plus a letter is genuinely enough. Set the figure early, when the wedding budget is being drafted, because this is the line item that always gets squeezed last.

Q: What's the best thank you gift for mother of the bride?

A: The gifts mothers of the bride keep longest are personal and wedding-anchored: a handwritten letter delivered the morning of the wedding, a framed photo of the two of you from years before the day, engraved jewellery with the wedding date, or a bound book of family recipes collected from her and both grandmothers. Vouchers for a restaurant or day spa also work well because they land after the planning is over, when she finally has time. Avoid anything generic — a candle or a bunch of flowers on their own read as an obligation met rather than a thank you given.

Q: Should the gift for the groom's parents cost the same as the bride's parents?

A: Yes — keep the value roughly equal even if the financial contributions weren't. Unequal parent gifts are the most common source of quiet hurt feelings after a wedding, and the parents who contributed more rarely wanted a larger gift in return. Spend the same on each side but choose different gifts, so neither reads as a duplicate of the other. Where one side genuinely did more — hosted the rehearsal dinner, drove the planning — acknowledge that in the words: your speech, your card, a phone call. Effort gets recognised in language, not in the receipt.

Q: When should you give parents their wedding thank you gift?

A: The rehearsal dinner or the morning of the wedding are the two best windows. Both are quiet enough for the gift to actually register, and they happen while the day still feels shared. A letter in particular is best given in private that morning. Giving gifts during the reception speeches works for words but is awkward for parcels, and anything handed over weeks later tends to read as an afterthought. A post-wedding family lunch is a good middle ground if the morning is too hectic — and it gives you time to include a photo from the day.

Q: How do you thank parents at a wedding during your speech?

A: Name the specific thing they did. "Thanks to both sets of parents" is forgettable; "Mum rang eleven florists and found the one who said yes" is not. Pick one concrete detail per parent, say what it meant, and keep each one to two or three sentences so the speech doesn't become a list. It helps to write these lines down well before the day — nerves wipe out good intentions. If both sets of parents are present, give them equal airtime and equal warmth, and if someone significant has passed, a short, calm mention is usually welcome.

Q: Can siblings share one thank you gift for their parents?

A: Yes, and it's usually the better option. Pooling means one meaningful gift instead of three medium ones — a weekend away, a portrait sitting, or a significant keepsake. Across the funded group collections on PocketWell, the median page draws about 13 contributors and collects around $570, which shows how quickly modest contributions add up. Agree the gift first and the per-person amount second, suggest rather than demand a figure, and use a single collection link so nobody is chasing cash — our group gift contribution splitter works out a fair per-person share in seconds. Put every name on the card, including whoever gave least.

Q: What if our parents contributed nothing financially?

A: Then thank them for what they did contribute — turning up, helping on the day, raising you. Financial contribution isn't the measure of a parent's role in a wedding, and tying your gift to it creates exactly the imbalance you want to avoid. Keep the gifts equal across both sides, choose something personal, and let the speech do the specific work. Plenty of parents simply aren't in a position to contribute money, and a gift that quietly reflects that is noticed. Spend what you can on both sides equally, and let the thank you be about the relationship rather than the ledger.

Final tips

The short version on a thank you gift for parents of the bride and groom: budget $100–$250 per parent couple, keep the two sides equal in value and different in style, give the gift at the rehearsal dinner or on the morning of the wedding, and put the specific details in writing. If the money's gone, a letter and a well-prepared speech are a complete thank you — and always have been.

One last practical note. Keep a running list of who gave what as gifts come in, because 16% of wedding gifts arrive after the day itself and your memory of the week will not be reliable. A gift page with a dashboard does this for you automatically, which makes writing thank-you cards a thirty-minute job instead of a weekend.

Ready to take some pressure off the family budget? Create your free wedding wishing well — it's free for hosts, takes minutes to set up, and your guests can give from their phone with Apple Pay, Google Pay or a card.