PayPal Wedding Invite Irks Some Guests

Sept. 9, 2009 — -- 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.

She and her husband-to-be, Parker, co-own Atlanta-based CorporLLC.com, a company that helps entrepreneurs get their business ideas off the ground.

Many of the individuals who have stepped forward to sponsor her wedding free of charge have received, in exchange for their services, free consulting or help in marketing their own businesses.

"We're being creative and using our talents," said Caldwell.

Any income the duo makes, said Caldwell, goes straight back into their business, leaving them with little spending money, which, combined with the ongoing recession, led her to think outside the box for her own wedding.