What Millennials Really Want For Wedding Gifts

It’s the middle of July, which only means that the summer wedding season is in full swing. Which, if you're not getting married, you're probably going to a bunch. Because of that, Best Buy, in conjunction with Wakefield Research, conducted a survey to dig deep into the millennial wedding. Who's planning it? What traditions do we follow? What's on those registries? While your parents may have stocked up on fancy China and place settings like 20 years ago, you and your friends today are opting for gifts of the more tech-fancy variety. After all, who needs fancy place settings you won’t ever use (really, ever) when you can have that HDTV you've always wanted?

The study, which took place around June of this year, surveyed 1,000 brides and 1,000 grooms. They split those people into two categories: newlyweds and experienced couples who have been married for 20-plus years. Best Buy conducted the study because they wanted to look further into the world of millennial weddings after launching their very own wedding registry earlier this year.

Here are the key findings of the survey:

1. Grooms Are More Involved

Forget the notion that brides are the only ones who care about the wedding. It was found that grooms today are stepping up. In fact, 69 percent of brides said their grooms played a significant role in their wedding planning. Twenty years ago, that percentage was down with only 49 percent of brides saying their grooms helped in wedding plans.

About 60 percent of men actively participated in choosing the food and drinks, while 43 percent helped with the wedding registry. Regardless of whether or not they were highly involved in wedding plans, a large majority of grooms, 92 percent, agreed that wedding planning should be an equal endeavor.

2. It’s All About The Tech

Of course no Best Buy survey would be complete without the mention of something tech-related. About 76 percent of couples, both newlyweds and those who have been married for 20-plus years, said they would prefer to register Ultra High-Definition TVs than formal place settings. Who wouldn’t?

Furthermore, 75 percent of couples from the 20-plus-years group said they would “tech-ify” their registries, with 41 percent wanting a TV, 40 percent asking for a camera, 31 percent asking for a tablet, and about 25 percent asking for a smart thermostat or wireless sound system.

"Just as weddings are changing, so are the gifts couples are looking for," Wendy Fritz, Best Buy's head of gifting strategy said. "Both the bride and groom are spending more time than ever on their registries, and tech items are showing up more and more because of how couples live and work today."

As mentioned previously, Best Buy launched its new registry back in February and found that Blu-ray players, streaming TV devices and practical items such as hand blenders and slow cookers, were some of the most popular items that couples registered for. The top three most requested gifts were the Ninja professional blender, an Apple TV, and an Oster cordless wine opener.

3. Couples Today Are More Traditional?

Could it be that we millennials are way more old-school than our parents? Maybe. After all, a study released a couple months back found that we have sex with less people than our parents did. Now, the Best Buy study found that couples today have more wedding traditions than those who were married over 20 years ago. About 23 percent of couples are making more formal and public proposals, 46 percent are doing the whole engagement photo thing, and 45 percent are partaking in more wedding-related events such as bachelor and bachelorette parties. But as the study notes, couples today are more likely to participate in those kinds of things because millennials are all about capturing every single moment of their lives in photos. In fact, couples today take almost three times as much photos as older couples did.

The survey also found that 74 percent of couples would like a gift that's useful rather than sentimental, and about half of people surveyed believe the average cost of a wedding gift should exceed $50. So, be sure to remember that when you're buying gifts for the next wedding you're attending.

Images: artisticfilms/Pixabay; Giphy(3)