Brides, here’s an interesting news article (ABC News.com) about a couple asking guests to contribute cash for their wedding day.   What are you thoughts on this — tacky, smart, both?

PayPal Wedding Invite Irks Some Guests
Some Say Asking for Money Is ‘Tacky,’ Others See Creative Edge in Recession
By EMILY FRIEDMAN
Sept. 9, 2009 — ABC News

For bride-to-be Vanessa Caldwell, nothing about her upcoming November wedding is traditional, especially in these hard economic times.
She is, after all, requesting monetary donations in lieu of gifts from those attending her wedding. There’s even a link to PayPal on the couple’s site to accommodate credit cards.
“We don’t need pots and pans or a registry, we need a wedding,” Caldwell, 28, told ABCNews.com.  And so Caldwell and her fiance, 36-year-old Cole Parker, developed a Web site, Dollarforawedding.com, advertised it to family and friends through Facebook, and saw the donations pour in.

So far, Caldwell has received approximately $750 toward her $2,000 goal but said she’s likely far outdone her original estimate with several sponsorships she’s received, from a photographer offering her services in return for free advertising at the wedding to a florist proposing a similar deal.
“We weren’t trying to have a lavish wedding; this wasn’t a get rich plan,” said Caldwell. “This was just to help us with a small intimate wedding with no more than 75 people.”
The idea for the site and the guest-funded wedding was born out of her own family and friends, said Caldwell.
“This is both mine and my fiance’s second marriage, so we were thinking about just going to a court house,” said Caldwell, who has been with Parker for nearly two years. “We didn’t want a big shebang, just something small.

“But our friends wanted to be in the celebration and asked us what we wanted help with,” she said.

Money, it turns out, was what Caldwell needed most.  Read the rest here.