How Israelis (unknowingly) crowdfund their own weddings
Foreigners used to giving physical gifts or buying items off registries are sometimes baffled by the custom.
By NIV ELISUpdated: AUGUST 27, 2015 12:32Groom and Bride(photo credit: INGIMAGE)
Bayit al Hayam, one of Tel Aviv’s fanciest wedding venues, sits at the northern edge of Jaffa, overlooking the city skyline and the sea.But when guests arrive for a wedding, the Mediterranean is not the first thing they see.Right after picking out their name cards, they are confronted with a safe.The safe is protected by two guards. One is armed. It is secured to a cement wall with an iron chain. Its purpose is to collect gifts in the form of cash or a check. At Bayit Al Hayam, they divide the cash portion of the loot into two bags at the end of the night, for safety, and make sure that the wedding car is wiped clean of decorations, so as not to attract thieves.While Israelis find this custom totally acceptable, foreigners used to giving physical gifts or buying items off registries are sometimes baffled.“Thirty years ago, it was appropriate to bring a physical gift, something useful typically, or decoratively functional.In the course of the last few years, it’s become more comAbuhav, an anthropologist at Beit Berl College. A Globes survey in June found that fully 96 percent of Israelis give cash as wedding gifts to non-relatives.Giving and receiving gifts, according to Abuhav, is a form of forging social ties.“There is a lot of symbolism associated with the gift. What is the relationship of the receiver and giver, what does the giver think of the receiver, what does the receiver think of himself? If I give a book, it means I’m an intellectual, that I want to impress the other side,” she explains.So why did Israelis give up the symbolically meaningful gifts in favor of cold hard cash? Abuhav attributes the change to a general shift in Israeli society, from its more collectivist socialist roots to one that has put the individual at the center of things. But just as importantly, it coincided with an increase in wealth, which led to greater extravagance.“The events in Israel have become more and more extravagant, with the general changes in Israeli society.Self-presentation has become more show-offish. There’s more money, money which must be shown. There are a lot of nouveaux riches, who tend to want to show off their abilities socially, because they’re nouveau, they’re new, as opposed to the old rich, whose value everyone knows,” she says.Another possible factor is the rise of premarital cohabitation. Getting gifts for a new home is less useful to a newlywed couple if they’ve already been living together for years.According to Abuhav, engaged couples started letting their parents know that they prefer cash to physical gifts, and instructed them to spread the word to their guests.THE VALUE of those gifts adds up. Every year, Israelis give NIS 9 billion in gifts for 140,000 celebratory events. About a third of those events are weddings, an industry that in 2007 was estimated at around NIS 8b. in Israel – that’s around $2b. According to Dun & Bradstreet, an average wedding costs between NIS 100,000 and NIS 140,000, with the event hall alone costing an average of NIS 85,000.Given the ballooning costs of a wedding, it’s not surprising that couples have come to prefer cash gifts to help them cover the costs.“If you want to look at it cynically, you can say that the guests are paying an entrance ticket to an event that they didn’t choose,” says Abuhav.A more charitable point of view might see it as crowdfunding.Crowdfunding generally refers to asking large numbers of people for small donations to reach a goal, and has gained popularity through the Internet because of its massive reach. People have used crowdfunding to do anything from financing a charity project to getting their startup off the ground. For example, when the producers of the TV show Veronica Mars decided to make a movie, they turned to their fans on the Web to get the project going.They raised over $5.7 million.Jon Medved, the head of equity crowdfunding company OurCrowd, estimates that $20b. will be invested through various forms of crowdfunding this year alone.But can people really crowdfund their weddings? Consider the case of Victoria Sadykov.With 17 days until her wedding, Sadykov’s financial situation was unenviable.Money had always been a struggle for the Jerusalem transplant, who had moved from Canada a year earlier, and her parents were in no position to help.In an act of desperation, Sadykov took to Facebook for help. She posted a link to a campaign on GoFundMe, a crowdsourcing website, trying to raise $20,000 for her wedding.“I could do with one night, one night that I don’t have to worry about money,” she wrote in her plea, which she posted on the Israeli Anglo Facebook group Secret Jerusalem. “I know it’s the marriage that matters and not the wedding, but my life has been a huge struggle, and if you guys could help me feel like a princess for just one night, that’s all I ask.”The post sparked a tense, harsh discussion online, mostly focused on why a down-on-her-luck bride would need such an expensive wedding.“I’d like a month’s rent. I also plan on eating out a bunch of times this month.Can you good people finance me? (Same concept),” one commenter wrote.But others rushed to Sadykov’s defense: “If you don’t want to donate, don’t donate!!! But no need for nasty remarks. No couple should feel bad on their wedding day due to a lack of funds.Mazel Tov to the couple!!” The thread generated 113 comments in five hours, many of them critical, but the venture was worth it: the campaign raised $11,807 by Sadykov’s wedding day.Sadykov’s story is not representative of the typical Israeli wedding. It inspired outrage, in part, because it asked strangers for monetary help on what they viewed to be a frivolous expenditure.But is it really so different from the modern system that has evolved in Israel? Medved thinks there’s a strong case to be made that the cash-for-cost system that’s evolved in Israel is a form of crowdfunding.“Today that’s the way most Israelis go about putting on their wedding. And your job as a good responsible guest is to estimate how much it costs to feed you, and then you give that money to the couple,” he says.THE CULTURE of monetary gift-giving has become so entrenched in Israel that it not only permeates the thinking of guests but also of couples planning their big day and the infrastructure that surrounds the wedding industry.Perhaps the best example of the institutionalized culture of crowdfunded weddings is Kama Kesef. The tool, which means “how much money,” is a feature on Zap’s Mitchatnim website that helps people figure out exactly how much money it is that they’re supposed to give.“It comes from a need from guests, like you and me, who are invited to events as guests throughout the year, and they’re not sure exactly how much money they’re supposed to give, because on one hand we don’t want to come out as suckers and bring more money than we’re supposed to, and on the other hand we don’t want to be thought of as cheapskates that didn’t bring enough,” says Revital Slonim Arie, the brand manager of Zap Mitchatnim.Mitchatnim hired a group of researchers from the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology to develop the algorithm for an online calculator. To figure out the amount a guest “owes,” they came up with parameters, some of which seem irrelevant at first glance, but each of which carries its own logic.For example, the calculator asks users to list the venue. Is it a kibbutz, a backyard, out in nature, or “the” hot place about town? The implication is that a fancier place costs the couple more, meaning the guest should give a heftier gift to cover his place.Then there are questions about the month and day. Why would the day of the week affect how much money a guest should give as a wedding gift? Again, it’s all about costs.“It’s supply and demand,” says Tzur Gilboa, one of Bayit al Hayam’s owners.“Summer is the desirable time. People want to get married in the summer, and in the winter fewer and fewer people marry.” Likewise, Thursday is more expensive because partying on a weekend, without fear of dragging into work the next day with a hangover, is desirable.Some places charge a premium for Tuesdays, because God said “and it was good” twice on Tuesday, making it a luckier day to get married. Others put a premium on Fridays, because day weddings can be more beautiful at certain venues.The differences can add up to NIS 100 per plate, says Gilboa.Gift-givers are so concerned with covering their share of the wedding, he adds, that some call ahead to inquire the cost of a plate.But in Kama Kesef’s formulation, the price tag is not the only factor. There is also a social mechanism: students or low-income earners are expected to pay less. Distant relatives or friends also get a discount. People simply aren’t expected to pay as much if they cannot afford it, or if they are at the wedding as a courtesy to a parent, for example.All of that gift-giving adds up.JUNE’S SURVEY in Globes found that over a third of Israelis spend between NIS 1,000 and NIS 3,000 every year on attending weddings. On average they gave NIS 400 per event, though those prices vary tremendously based on all the factors we mentioned earlier. Second- circle friends can pay less than NIS 350, while the closest friends and relatives might pay NIS 1,000 or more.On the flip side, the happy couple could start thinking of gifts as a lump sum, a budgetary line item instead of a generous present. I ask Slonim Arie from Kama Kesef if couples use the calculator to figure out what they can spend.“Absolutely yes,” she says, “They do a certain inflow estimate, as it’s called.”The process has become so transactional that some wedding venues are eschewing the safe in favor of a simple credit card reader. And the system works: Monetary gifts generally help newlyweds cover between 70% and 80% of their costs.But the calculations can be tricky.Couples sometimes have to incorporate strategic thinking into their budgetary planning, notes Gilboa.“Every couple has its calculations.There are some couples who think that if they invite more people, then the cost per meal will drop. And there are those who think, ‘I’ll invite fewer, because I don’t want to have a big event. But ultimately, when you look at the final tally,when you invite 400, 500, 600 people, you’re already adding circles of people that you hardly know, that you haven’t seen in many years, and those people who arrive do it because of obligation, and therefore the level of the gift they give is much more... let’s call it thrifty,” he says.Smaller weddings, by contrast, consist of people in your innermost circles, who by Kama Kesef’s standards should pay the most.BUT WHAT do actual couples think? Do they see the process as crowdfunding? “I don’t really think of my friends helping me pay for my wedding,” says the recently engaged Rachel. “I don’t think of it in those terms.”That said, she readily admits that in the planning phases, she runs through the cost analysis.“It comes back to this thing that you think about an intimate wedding versus a huge wedding, because the people who are your good friends and family will more likely give you a more generous financial gift. It’s more likely that someone I don’t know as well won’t cover their plate,” she says.Her fiancé, Omer, also says he doesn’t see the wedding as a crowdfunding experience, but points to another issue: reciprocity.“I know if I pay some amount to my friend’s wedding I expect to get back the same amount of money,” he says. The sentiment is not uncommon (and not a factor in Kama Kesef’s calculator).Gal and Nitzan, another recently engaged couple, decided that instead of the usual wedding banquet hall, they’re going to have what they’re calling a social wedding. In lieu of gifts, friends are requested to bring food, entertainment or something to contribute to the event itself.But the event will still cost them money. Asked if they had taken into account how their wedding choice would affect their overall budget, Nitzan responds: “It’s hard to tell because people bring money to cover the expense of the wedding. So yes, we took into account that we’re going to do a cheap wedding, and we’re going to get less money.”Had they ever thought of the current system as crowdfunding? “Not until just now,” says Nitzan. “But yeah, I guess that’s right,” adds Gal.Even as some Israelis push back on the convention of implicit wedding crowdfunding, the trend is starting to pick up in the US. A recent New York Times article noted that millennials are increasingly asking for cash gifts to celebrate their nuptials. Instead of gift registries, websites like Honeyfund are popping up, letting guests cover the costs of the honeymoon instead.