TENS of thousands of pounds will be raised for British charities this summer as couples tying the knot ask their guests to make charitable donations instead of buying gifts.

Brides and grooms who have already amassed a wealth of toasters, towels and cutlery before their big day are redirecting friends and family to www.weddinglistgiving.com, a scheme piloted in Britain last year when it helped to raise more than £25,000 for 13 charities, including the Alzheimer’s Society, Amnesty International, Cancer Research UK, Friends of the Earth, Oxfam and the RSPCA.

The site’s co-founders, who are professional fundraisers for the Asphaleia Project, a charity that works with marginalised young people, say that they already have 10 per cent more couples registering than for the whole of last year and have signed up an additional 15 charities. Among them are Centrepoint, Refuge and Adopt-A-Minefield. A further 20 charities are at contracting stage.

Hannah Gee set up the site with her cousin Holly Long after she got married and realised that there was no easy way to ask guests to donate to charity. She said: “My fiancé and I had lots of stuff so we wanted to get rid of things before we got married. We wanted to ask our guests to donate to charity but we were so busy with everything else that it was the last thing we could think about. So we came up with the idea, spoke to Holly, looked into it and said let’s go for it.”

Of the 95 couples that have used the site, the average wedding has raised about £650 for charity. As the average age of marriage continues to rise — it is now 35 for men and 32 for women — the site’s co-founders believe that more people are likely to abandon traditional wedding lists and opt for a more benevolent gift-giving.

Ms Long, who runs the scheme with her cousin unpaid, said: “Couples spend an average of £15,764 on their wedding with the largest portion, averaging £2,828, going on their honeymoon. We felt that if Wedding List Giving can help redirect even a small portion of this estimated £3.5 billion annual spend to charity, then our efforts will have been worth it.”

Tearfund, the sixth-largest relief and development charity in Britain, has been one of the biggest beneficiaries. A spokesman said: “We joined the site in spring 2004 and since then we have had a tremendous response — couples have donated about £8,000.

“We signed on partly because we were already getting calls from couples who wanted their guests to donate to us. The site formalised something that was beginning to happen.”

Charities pay £100 a year to subscribe and currently a small percentage of the value of donations received cover the site’s costs. Couples pay nothing. All they need do is register online, choose one or two charities to support, and then set up an automated web page where guests can make donations and leave messages.

If a bride and groom have a favourite charity that is not on the list, Wedding List Giving will e-mail it on the pair’s behalf and handle administration.

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