June 2, 2022 jennie flynn

gift guide: how to give the perfect wedding gift

Wedding gifts are always tricky. Having thought long and hard about it for many years now here’s our two cents on how to pick the perfect wedding gift that will go straight to the heart of the newlyweds in your life.

When picking any gift it’s always a good idea to start with a bit of fact finding. What do you know about the people you’re buying for? This is easy if it’s a close friend or someone in your direct family but can be fraught if it’s for a work colleague, or a distant cousin you haven’t seen since childhood. Even if you don’t know the couples taste there are other factors that can help determine the gift that will get the best reception.

Is cash king? It really depends on who you ask and when you ask them. An engaged couple looking at spending between 10-50K on a day out will probably say that they would prefer cash to a toaster in case of budget overruns but when you ask a married couple what their favourite wedding present was they’re unlikely to mention the €150 quid they got from Uncle John, despite how welcome it was at the time, so it’s important to consider what impression you want to make.

In a 2012 Net Mums poll Denby dinner sets came in as the number one wedding gift received with the top reason listed as it was something that the couple used every day. We don’t tend to have the space or the interest in keeping a set of ‘good’ china these days. Wedding gifts were originally intended as a way to set a couple up for future but if they’ve been living together for years or are combining two households there may not be much they need in terms of household appliances or flatware. Still, a gift that gets regular use will remind the couple of both the day and the people who gave it to them. There’s also a sense of achieving a milestone and levelling up that comes with getting hitched, that can be reflected in the things you surround yourself with.

There’s also the fine balancing act of being seen to be appropriate, what style of a wedding is it? 300 people in the K club, or an intimate group at the registry office then off to a nice restaurant for dinner. Are you invited to the whole day / weekend or just the afters?

Weddings are a time when you can indulge your more sentimental side as the whole day is about establishing history, and making memories so gifts that help you record those memories in some way always go down well. There was a positive craze for chopping boards and photo frames engraved with the happy couples names and date of their nuptials, and while there is something to be said for personalisation, they are unlikely to forget either their own names or the date of the wedding. However a gift that speaks to the idea of a shared life, of throwing your lot in with someone else and presenting a united front to the world can’t help but go down well. Gifts that reference the time and place when those memories speak to the idea of legacy wrapped up in weddings.

So what would we suggest?