Family activities expert Dana Christine offers ideas for creative wedding gifts.
- You can send wedding gifts up to a year after the wedding ceremony has occurred, so why not give the bride and groom a wedding time capsule. Fill an appropriate container with photos of the bride and groom from the past year of marriage. Put any keepsakes you may have gotten from the reception or ceremony into the capsule, too.
- How about giving a spice rack that includes an array of fresh spices?
- Have the wedding invitation framed, or frame it yourself.
- Make a collage of the invitation, the wedding program, photos and other appropriately themed items.
- Give the couple a honeymoon photo album into which they can put pictures from their trip. If they are going somewhere tropical, include a disposable underwater camera.
- Give concert tickets with a compact disc of the musicians. You could also give them a couple of tickets to a play or a sporting event. This is something the couple can look forward to after the honeymoon and wedding festivities have ended.
- Arrange for the couple to have dinner at a nice restaurant on their honeymoon, and you pick up the tab. Call the office of tourism where the couple will be staying and find out the name of a nice restaurant. Talk to the restaurant manager to work out the details of your surprise.
- If the couple recently bought a house together, purchase them a nice tree or bush to plant in their yard. They can watch it grow, along with their marriage.
- Cards can easily get lost or misplaced from the gift during the reception. One way to prevent this is to place it in the box with the gift.
- Buy a white mailbox, decorate it with acrylic paint and line it. You can use it as a box for the gift, then bride and groom can take it home and use it.
