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.