The Hunt For The Perfect Wedding Gift
Over the years our family has gotten a reputation as, well, ‘picky, ‘ to put not too fine a point on the matter. We have to admit, my sister and I, that we do like to put forth a good deal of effort finding the ideal gift for any situation.
The whole thing started when our youngest nephew and his high school sweetheart announced they were engaged. They’d just completed two-year degrees at a local community college, and they’d been accepted at a senior institution across the country. They’d done the math, they said, and figured out that the two of them could live together much cheaper than either one could get room and board at college, so why wait?
On the one hand, we were proud that they were going to tie the knot, rather than simply live together as so many young people do these days. Call us old-fashioned, but we think there’s something about making a binding commitment to one another, in the presence of family and friends, that can sustain a couple through tough times. We’ve seen it happen ourselves, and we wanted that kind of support for our nephew and his fiancee, a lovely girl.
Given their situation, we found ourselves faced with a wedding dilemma: We simply couldn’t decide on an appropriate wedding gift.
My husband, in all seriousness, suggested we get them that Epiphone electric guitar our nephew once said he wanted. I told him he was being an old fool; the boy had wanted that guitar when he was 16 and was going to run away and join a rock n’ roll band. Now that he was nearly 20 and on the verge of getting married, there must be other more important things they needed.
Still, buying a guitar could have saved us weeks of frustration over what to get the newlyweds. We thought about giving them money, a practical gift under the circumstances, but not a permanent memento of the event. My sister thought one day she’d overheard her future daughter-in-law asking a friend about a Delonghi oven. Her relief at finding a gift evaporated the next day when she found out it was the friend, not her son’s fiancee, who was interested.
For a while we thought that the bride-to-be would like a Cuisinart food processor. After all, we reasoned, she’s planning to be a caterer. To our dismay we discovered she was under instructions from her future professors not to invest in any motorized equipment. Instead they’ve learning to prepare food by hand.
Then it hit us: Why not combine something memorable with something practical? At a local gift shop we found a beautiful silver picture frame that could be engraved with the couple’s first names and their wedding date. Then we went round the corner and picked up a gift card for a substantial amount that they could use for housewares once they got settled. We slipped the gift card inside the picture frame and voila! Gift problem solved.
