Wedding host ordered to pay for gift he did not give

A gift-giving tradition cost a wedding host a gold coin when a guest sought to reclaim it in a bizarre legal case. It is a custom in Turkish weddings to give a gold coin or bracelet to marrying couples as a gift but as it is the case with other traditions and under moral norms, you do not expect the couple to return the favor when you get married.

A woman in central Turkey's Kayseri province took offense when she gave a gold coin to her neighbor's daughter at her wedding but did not get one in return. The guest tried to make the custom a legally binding practice and applied to the local judicial authority handling insolvency cases to reclaim the gold they had given the couple in question. In a rare case, the authority complied with the request and ordered the recipient to return the coin or make a payment equal to the value of the coin.

Mahmut Şahin, head of the Consumers Union, says people traditionally gift gold coins to the bride and groom, who eventually are also expected to do the same in the guests' wedding. "An individual from Kayseri launched a legal process when the host they gifted a coin to did not show up at their wedding. The coin's recipient could object and be not obliged to pay but he apparently feared that there would be legal consequences and paid it," Şahin told Anadolu Agency.