DON'T MISS A THING

Groomsmen gifts used to be a total afterthought. A novelty flask, maybe a pair of socks with a terrible pun on them, or a bottle opener shaped like something your mom would pretend not to see. Everyone laughs at the rehearsal dinner, but by the following week the gift gets relegated to a junk drawer, only sinking deeper as more junk piles on top.

But the way grooms think about these gifts has changed pretty dramatically in recent years, and it tracks with how weddings themselves have changed. Couples pour more time, more thought, and more money into every single detail of their day now, and that same care is finally reaching the groomsmen gift table. Here’s the thing most grooms tend to forget: the average groomsman now spends roughly $1,800 to stand beside you on your wedding day. When you consider that number, the old joke gift starts to look a bit tone-deaf.

The Real Cost of Saying Yes

Most people have no idea how much it actually costs to be a groomsman until they’ve done it. Tux rental, the bachelor party, flights or gas, a hotel room for the weekend, plus the wedding gift itself. Today, the average wedding comes in at well over $30,000, and groomsmen absorb a genuine chunk of that on their end through custom attire, bachelor party contributions, and all the smaller costs that stack up in the months before the ceremony. A groomsman’s total spend can easily hit four figures without anyone really noticing until the credit card statement arrives.

That financial reality is a big part of why grooms are taking the thank-you gift more seriously now. If your best friend has quietly spent over a thousand dollars to be part of your wedding, handing him a novelty bottle opener in tissue paper doesn’t really cut it.

Why the Gag Gift Lost Its Appeal

For years, the default groomsmen gift lived somewhere between a joke and a branded accessory. Matching sunglasses, personalized beer koozies, custom socks printed with the groom’s face. Fun at the time, sure. Instagram-friendly, absolutely. But almost guaranteed to end up forgotten within a month.

The move away from this kind of gifting isn’t purely about taste, though. It lines up with a bigger change in how people buy and give things in general, where there’s a growing preference for objects with a story behind them, things that were made by an actual person instead of printed to order in a warehouse somewhere. Grooms who spend months choosing bespoke details for their venue, their menu, and their suits are starting to bring that same thinking to what they hand their groomsmen at the end of the night.

That’s why more grooms are picking up handmade leather goods, hand-poured candles, craft spirits, or engraved barware instead of a shrink-wrapped gift set. The gift should tell the recipient something specific about the friendship you share with them, and it should be obvious that someone actually thought about it before clicking “add to cart.”

What Personalization Actually Looks Like Now

Engraving a name on something has been around forever, but the amount of control grooms have over the process today is completely different. You used to pick a font, type in a name, and cross your fingers that it looked decent when it arrived. Now you can preview your engraving in full 3D before committing to the order, so you’ll know exactly how a name, a date, or even an inside joke will look on the finished piece before it ships. That turns the whole thing from a coin toss into something you can actually get creative with.

The history buff in the group, for example, might love a replica sword letter opener for the desk, a leather-bound journal, or a handcrafted pewter tankard engraved with something only they’d understand. Specialists in handcrafted groomsmen gifts now offer that kind of detail, with diamond-cut engraving that won’t fade and 3D previews that let you fine-tune the inscription before anything gets made. The ale drinker in the group might get his initials and a date engraved on his. If that ale drinker also has a taste for history, the story of the Airborne Beer carried to besieged troops at Bastogne is the kind of tale that makes a tankard worth raising. Your best man might get a line from a speech you both still quote ten years later. Everyone has the same object, but no two of them have the exact same gift.

Matching the Gift to the Moment

Etiquette guides have long suggested that the groom’s gift should roughly reflect what each groomsman invested in being part of the wedding. Nobody expects you to match it dollar for dollar, but the gift should acknowledge the commitment they made. If your groomsmen flew across the country, took time off work, and paid for a weekend they couldn’t entirely afford, what you give them should carry some weight behind it.

That doesn’t mean you need to spend a fortune, though. A handcrafted object with a personal inscription will always outweigh something expensive but generic, and you can get pretty far just by thinking about what each groomsman actually does with his time. The friend who hosts game nights every other week would genuinely love a quality pewter tankard he can bring out again and again. The one who’s always traveling might appreciate something compact and leather-bound that he’ll actually pack. You know these people better than anyone, and the gift should prove it.

A Gift That Earns Its Place

The best groomsmen gifts all have one quality in common: they get used. Not displayed ironically on a shelf, not tucked into a box in the closet. Actually folded into someone’s daily life. A well-made wallet gets pulled out every single day. A set of cufflinks comes back out at the next formal event, and a heavy pewter tankard gets filled on Friday nights without a second thought. Over time, the object stops being a gift and starts being just a part of how someone lives.

And that’s the real reason the old gag gift is dying out. It was never built to last beyond the laugh. The newer wave of groomsmen gifts doesn’t need to be flashy or expensive. It just needs to be something the recipient picks up and immediately knows was chosen for them, not pulled off a shelf at random. Get that right, and the gift goes beyond a simple thank you. It becomes a reminder of who was there and why it mattered.

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