Wedding lists are the reward for organising weddings. Dashing around John Lewis, happy couples can imagine a toaster-rich future together, their bitter disputes about church colour schemes briefly thawed by the warm glow of collective greed.

So pity the customers of Wrapit, the wedding list service that has gone into administration. Facing a giftless marriage, they can only hope they survive the tough first few years without a Nintendo Wii - a popular choice at Debenhams.

But as more people marry later in life - already living together in well-stocked homes - and amid concern about economic excess, this is not the only change in the world of gift lists.

Charity

Cows are the new “in” presents - as are trees, wells and chickens. Christmas was not enough, apparently, so now the most romantic day of your life can be celebrated with the promise that Oxfam will dig a toilet in Darfur or sponsor a heifer.

The alternativeweddinglist.co.uk has an example invitation. “Thanks for visiting the gift list for John Smith & Jennifer Jones,” it says. “Hello from us both and thanks for helping us to make a difference to the world.” If, after reading that, you don't want to beat John and Jennifer about the head with their own sandals before thrusting dry muesli down their throats, a charity wedding list may be for you.

Carbon offsetting

But has the goat been offset? Give a man some goats' cheese, and he will live for one day. Give a man a goat, and the planet will suffer a goat's lifecycle-worth of flatulence-induced rising sea levels. Such is the treacherous world of altruism.

Thank Gaia then for carbonneutral.com . Fearing that the one emotion missing from most weddings is guilt, they offer the “Marry Me/Carbon Neutral Wedding Pack”. Guests can dedicate trees in a “MarryMe Wood”, going some way to offsetting the carbon (and other) crimes incurred by playing Build Me Up Buttercup and the Grease medley on the wedding's sound system until two in the morning.

Honeymoon

If, however, all you want to offset is the overwhelming self-satisfaction of those who chose the previous two wedding lists, then Trailfinders' honeymoon gift list is the site for you. “You help the environment if you want,” it seems to say. “But we're going to milk our extended relatives for a riotously wasteful long-haul holiday in the Maldives.”

This is a wedding list without the pretence. When someone buys you a kettle from a conventional list, you know exactly how much he or she has spent. With Trailfinders, all you have is a monetary contribution.

What to put on the thankyou letters, though? “Dear Aunt Margaret, thank you for your kind contribution of £60; it bought us 70 miles of flying distance and helped to ensure that the Maldives have eight minutes less time before disappearing beneath the sea in our shared global warming future.” Or maybe if you choose this sort of wedding list, you're not the kind to trouble yourself with thankyou letters.

Art

For the classier materialist, weddings can be an excellent opportunity to fill the gaps in one's art portfolio. Many galleries offer the facility for wedding guests to contribute towards a particular work or to buy smaller pieces outright.

The bespoke service shoppingmistress.co.uk will, for a £1,000 fee, organise a list containing almost any gift. It helpfully provides a recent example, where a bride and groom chose a Banksy print, a Louis XV bed, a grand piano and a pair of fluffy pink handcuffs.

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