Wedding Day Advice | Wedding Planning

In years gone by, newly-weds often moved straight from their family homes into the first home of their own. Wedding guests would give gifts of useful, durable household items – china crockery, silver cutlery, crystalware and linen were popular choices. These days, couples are getting married later in life and have either lived in houses of their own or together as a couple before marriage. As a result, most couples have already accumulated most household items. This makes the task of gift-giving on the guests’ part more difficult (what do they get the couple who already has everything?) and the job of gift-receiving trickier on the part of the wedding couple (what does the couple who has everything ask for?). You needn’t live in fear of receiving three cheese platters and five silver photo frames…check out these Six Wedding Gift Trends…

Photo courtesy of Ruffled

1. Gift Registry for Homeware: Couples set up a gift registry at a favourite homeware store and create a list of items that they desire, either luxury-type items that don’t already have or items which they would like to upgrade. As guests purchase the items, they’re removed from the list to avoid duplication.
2. Monetary Contributions: Rather than receiving material gifts, couples ask their guests to make a monetary contribution, which they will use to put towards a down payment on a house or for big-ticket household items like leather couches or outdoor furniture.
3. The Honeymoon Registry: This is a service, offered by traditional travel agencies and online agencies, which assists couples in financing their honeymoons. It works much the same as traditional material gift registries – couples create a list of ‘must-have items’ for their honeymoon, for example – flights, restaurant dinners, boat cruises, museum trips and so on – and their guests purchase the gifts they want to give. More expensive items can be divided into smaller increments, allowing guests to club together.
4. Donations to a Favourite Charity or Cause: The couple asks their guests to make a financial contribution to a cause nominated by them, for example the World Wildlife Fund or the Red Cross, in lieu of them buying a gift or giving them money.
5. Experience Gifts: Experiential gifting is one of the fastest growing segments of the gift market. Instead of buying the wedding couple a material gift, guests buy the couple an experience to enjoy; it could be a spin in a hot-air balloon or helicopter flip, a wine-tasting trip to a vineyard, a sunset boat cruises or even gourmet cooking lessons.
6. Sporting Equipment: A hot new trend that’s rapidly catching on is for couples to set up gift registries at sporting goods stores to obtain sporting equipment for their favourite sport, hobby or past time.