It’s never simple to know what people will prefer or appreciate as a wedding present. How do you find unique wedding gifts? Or how will you find personalized wedding gifts for a couple? Are there particular times that you should go off the registry for getting people something better or different? And what might the expectations for groomsmen gifts and bridesmaid gifts be? Listed below are some great wedding present ideas which the bride and groom will genuinely like-organized into five useful ideas.

The Experience Gift

The wedding present idea here is to find them an item that they’ll enjoy and carry along with them beyond the utilization of the item itself. These usually turn out to be unique wedding gifts. Some examples include pitching in to buy them an upgrade on their wedding-night room, for the purpose of making sure it is extra plush, or sweetening their honeymoon experience. To upgrade their room, you’ll probably want to check with the bride’s mother or maid-of-honor (or whoever might understand these particular arrangements) to guarantee you put in for this before they sign their reservation. This definitely requires planning ahead of time! The same applies for sweeting their honeymoon experience. You might try to discover where they’re going and attempt to buy them a dinner while there, or a show, or maybe even pay to upgrade their airplane flight (which can be done rather last minute).

There’s scientific support for going this route. Psychologists, behavioral economists and philosophers studying what makes people happy have realized that because our brains encode memories selectively, we tend to remember favorable activities well. If you upgrade someone’s honeymoon, they’re more likely to remember it. Even if one of the couple got sea-sick on the cruise, that a part of the memory will more than likely fade (yea, really), and they’ll recall that you bought them an extra-special dinner.

The Expensive Item On The Registry

Depending on the group of people joining a wedding (are lots of rich people attending?), the expensive item or perhaps couple of expensive items, tend to be more of a wish-list-a wouldn’t it be nice if we got that? kind of item. So the wedding favor idea here should be to actually cobble together people’s funds to make the couple’s dream come true! They probably won’t receive the gift any other way, which means that this will blow them away!

Just make sure that if it’s a multi-gift item, like an expensive table-wear set, that you get them the entire set. This last bit is personal for both of us here. When we got married, people more or less completed our daily ware (yay!), but we had only three complete finer wear sets… It happens that a lot of our friends did arrange to get those and hoped that other people would pitch in, and that just didn’t happen. (On the up side: we did gradually complete the set over the next 36 months).

The Memory Gift

Of the suggestions for wedding favors, this is one of the best! It is a little like the experience gift, namely to acquire for them something they will look at a decade from now and say “Hey, remember that Ryan gave us that?” Some examples include towels (doesn’t everyone put that on their registry?), embroidered cloth, or engraved goods like glasses, watches, silverware, etc. Handmade or DIY (do-it-yourself) items also fall into this category, especially if they have some form of engraving or inscription upon them. You could also try the “time capsule” idea. For example, you might get them a nice bottle of wine with instructions to open it on their tenth anniversary.

Can I Give Cash?

The down sides for this wedding present idea are that it might seem not not-from-the heart or uncreative. The plus side: the couple can actually do what they need by using it. After receiving a mini heart-shaped waffle iron for a gift, we are able to say with quite a bit of confidence that we’d prefer cash. The important point to take into account here is that it’s rude to ask for cash, but it is not rude to be given it. Any newly married couple can use a bit more cash for moving expenses, a honeymoon, or possibly just a nice dinner together. If you’re pressed for time, or you just don’t know of a superior gift, cash is always welcome. And this is one of those cases where going off the registry for a wedding gift will be appreciated.

The Service Gift

The wedding present idea here is to find the couple a service they really want as opposed to a specific product for their unique gift. We mean services like housekeeping services, pre-paid car washes, yard work, car oil-changes, pre-paid dry-cleaning, etc. The crucial step to doing this right is knowing the couple well enough to be familiar with the sorts of services (1) they need and (2) that they are not likely to do themselves. All the points listed above are items that we would like taken care of ourselves: neither of us like raking leaves, vacuuming, washing the car (we are now living in NY so it’s usually cold), ironing dress shirts, getting underneath a car and looking to prevent oil getting everywhere, etc. We do have an uncle, however, who really likes changing his personal car’s oil-or at least he appears to like it-so probably a bad gift idea would be to offer that service for him. You understand the point.

Also, it may be tricky providing people with services that could be what you do for your individual business or job. If it’s something they will really use, it might be worth looking at, but don’t forget that you should avoid making it seem like you were just being cheap for the gift, and you need to be sure to keep friendship and business relations relatively split in that type of experience.

One of the most interesting phenomena I have experienced with home buyers is that, almost across the board, they assume they possess limited negotiating power. Buyers generally assume that the seller has the property and the bank has the money so they must have all the power, right? Nope.

Buyers enjoy a substantial amount of power in both home-price negotiations and mortgage negotiations. But they never believe they do. Let’s examine negotiating the price of your home. Buyers assume that sellers have multiple qualified prospects considering their home. Crafty real estate listing agents lead buyers to believe that if they don’t move on this home in the next couple of hours, they could lose it. And because of all this “interest,” the seller certainly won’t consider anything less than the full asking price.

In my experience, there are very few hot markets in which sellers have their pick of several pre-approved buyers who are prepared to close. I live in Baton Rouge, a city that was flooded with several hundred thousand people after Hurricane Katrina. At the time, Baton Rouge was such a hot market. But barring a catastrophic event that sends hundreds of thousands to your town looking for housing, almost no market is that hot.

If you are a pre-approved buyer that will be purchasing in the next few weeks, you are gold to the seller of a property. Most “interested” buyers are what we in real estate call “tire kickers.” These are buyers that have the inclination that they might buy in the next six months or ten years and decide to start looking. They don’t have their current home for sale, have not talked to a bank to see if they can afford the house, and are simply trying to get an idea of what’s out there. You on the other hand, have gotten a bank to agree to lend you money for a house, you have determined the neighborhoods you want to live in, and have a list of other houses you are considering. The seller will be thinking, “We better not let this one get away, because then we have to start all over doing open houses every weekend.” This situation affords you as a buyer substantial negotiating power.

Make sure the seller and seller’s agent know you are pre-approved by a bank and that you will be buying in the next couple of weeks. Let them know you have several attractive options you are considering and have to be able to get the home at a price you consider to be fair. Spend some time with the seller and agent going thorough the house and ask a lot of questions. There is a rule in negotiation that sellers become more negotiable in relation to the time they spend with a buyer.

Now, consider the facts. The seller has to sell their house to move on with their life. A house is not an easy item to convert to cash quickly. You have cash (or the promise of cash from the bank), and you are going to be making a decision among multiple attractive options in the next couple of weeks. Make sure the seller and seller’s agent know these facts, and watch the perception of power shift in your favor.

What is past and what is present? We obviously know that our past is gone and the events that formed the past can never be redone. The good, the bad, the beautiful or the ugly; they’ve already occurred; and all over now. What is important whenever we reminisce on our past is to make it as productive and relevant as possible to our present. While you cannot change what has transpired, you can change how you think about what happened.

Usually, when you think about the past and ever allow the positive events to dominate your thoughts, the tendencies are that; you will likely be grateful for those happy moments and probably imagine reliving it which may result in another emotion of self-pity knowing very well you cannot relive the past. In some cases, it helps you think of ways to improve your present so that the happiness continues. On the contrary, if ever your memory of the events you termed as negative needs to be revisited, unless you deal with the emotions associated with those events, you will continue to carry them with you into the present moment. To a large extent, if you failed to resolve issues of the past, the memories of such experiences become responsible for your spiritual and emotional bankruptcy when you become an adult. For instance if as a child, you were greatly abused, molested or had been harshly criticized and failed to deal with it earlier on, you are more likely to become very defensive and insecure in your adult life, which in essence becomes part of you and a way of life.

When you do not let go of tales of unhappiness, resentment, or rejection that filled your past you find it increasingly difficult to merge present activities to your dreams, sometimes the feelings you hold on to from your past experiences even deter you from aspiring as high as possible, having allowed those emotions of fear, revenge, guilt, blame or insecurity, to affect other areas of your life; which may include your relationships with people, attitudes, business and money matters. Undoubtedly, many of us have events, situations or people in our histories, which still evoke some emotions in us, but there is always time to work on such emotions to move beyond it. Maybe you were a victim of child abuse, and believe you could never live beyond the vestiges of that? Or you are finding it hard to forgive yourself for something you did years ago, and the guilt won’t just fade? There is nothing you can’t achieve if you believe and try.

The mistakes of yesteryear, either by you or other people, that have deposited a great deal of negative feelings within your body and soul, could be transformed from a severe liability into a valuable asset. While you could successfully do away with your feelings of anger, revenge, guilt, blame or fear, you simply didn’t because there is a reward from holding on your pain. You gain a lot from the thrill of the story. By having the story to tell, you derive some pleasure and get accepted by others. You create a stir and pacify your personal need for attention and the emotional energy associated with the event will be refreshed every time you tell your story. There is no harm in telling stories of your past but not in a way to allow you to whirl in your self-pity, or make others feel sorry for you because this simply puts you down and draw you back into unpleasant meditations.

Why not choose to use your past as a resource for progress and not a pool for pain? Why not choose to use your past as a sort of benchmark, counting your blessings on how well you have transformed your past into an inspiration for others? Many people are comfortable making themselves feel bad and do so at any opportunity. No matter what acknowledgement and attention you receive from sinking yourself into the ludicrous slush of sad tales, it can’t be as gainful as directing all your energies to your present moment, striving with focus for a greater tomorrow.

Tips to help:

Make amends where possible - If you need to make an apology for a past event and you really know it is possible for you to do so, then go ahead and free your mind, body and soul. Say sorry to whom you think deserves it. However, if you need an apology, don’t demand it except it is given voluntarily, don’t get stuck to the idea that you deserve an apology and not tendered. You often get disappointed expecting some people to do the right things. It keeps you stuck and away from achieving something greater. Take your mind off it and consider it inessential, because until you cut that chain, you cannot move forward. The process of making amends continue as you constantly aim to improve on our attitudes, behaviours, and a change in our outlook of the past in ensuring that the grievous harm from the past is totally erased.

Remember the past without strong emotions -Learn not to revisit your past morbidly or needlessly. You should practice letting go of the feelings that bring back the hurt you knew before and always view your past from a perspective that will make it as harmless as possible to you. See your past as a depot of knowledge and information which can help you make connections to elevate your self-esteem, courage and confidence.

Forgive- Learn to forgive yourself and forgive others who have maltreated you. More importantly, because you have made yourself a ditch filled with filth, carrying over the wreckage of your lost values. When you forgive, you will be able to first, believe in yourself, appreciate your worth, and give yourself the kindness, respect and love you deserve as well as extend such to others around you, far and near.

Need for acceptance- You have to accept the past, appreciate the experiences and acknowledge the lessons you have been able to learn from such experiences as all those will impact on your actions towards the positive changes required. You will then begin to tell just a story from one mile of the journey of your life and nothing more, simply accepting without condition and the more you accept, you become more accepting and forgiving to and of others. No matter what your past experiences were, you can live happier, without any grudge against yourself and anyone else by being in control of your actions and decisions and accept that your past had been the it was, simply because nature wanted it so. You have choices with your present moment and you can make the best use of the tools you now have.