Thank you may have heard this edition of more or less from the BBC World Service.

If you have been listening to the long edition of our programme,

broadcast originally on Radio 4, you may have heard this item before,

on the economics of buying a wedding gift.

Hello and welcome to more or less on the BBC World Service

we're the program which looks at the numbers all around us in life

and I'm Charlotte McDonald.

This week can economics help us decide how much to spend on people getting married?

If you go to a wedding, should you take a gift or perhaps give money?

And how much should you spend? I decided to go and ask some

of my colleagues around the BBC you can take them

something personal. I'm Gabrela Torres and I'm from Venezuela. Either buy an item

or you leave a certain amount of money.

More recently what they do is that they give you their bank account on the invitation.

Hi, I'm Neil, I'm from Vancouver on the West Coast of Canada,

and my wife and I, when we got married in the West Coast people gave us a gift.

Hi I'm Samihha and I'm from India.

So I come from a Muslim community in Carolina in Southern India.

So there if it's the wedding of a very close relative, then probably my parents might gift a

bride a gold ring or a bangle. So there are different traditions around the world. For some people you take gifts, they could be sentimental or practical, others it's about symbols, and in some places the

tradition is to give money. Like in Ireland, but how much should you give? One of the more or less team Jordan Dunbar is off to a wedding there soon, and he was hoping for some help.

So my friend Deona is getting married in Ireland, which means I've got to fly out there from London. First I've got to go to Belfast, which is in Northern Ireland, and then travel all the way down to the Republic of Ireland where the wedding's being held. Here in London and in England, there's more of a tradition of giving presence but in Ireland you tend to give money

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