What To Buy For The Newlyweds
Buying wedding gifts always presents emotional hazards. Even when a bride and groom register for possible gifts, we givers are never quite sure we’re getting them the right thing.
Well, you can imagine our anxiety when my sister’s youngest son announced to the family that he and his girlfriend of many years had decided to get married that summer before they both left for college in another state. Finishing their bachelor’s degrees was going to be tough enough without double the room and board expense, they claimed. Since they planned to get married anyway, that summer seemed like the perfect time.
Thrilled as we were at this news, we also were panicked. The happy couple was keeping their arrangements simple and casual, so there was less pre-wedding stress than might be expected. But my sister and I agonized for weeks over what would be the perfect wedding gift.
At first we thought about giving them money, but that seemed so crass. Besides, we wanted them to have something to remember from the occasion.
We were astonished one night about a month before the wedding when my brother-in-law recommended we buy our nephew an Epiphone electric guitar. It was all we could do to keep from laughing in his face. Nonetheless my forthright sister felt it was her wifely duty to tell her husband he was being foolish. A 20-year-old about to become a husband wasn’t interested in the guitar he’d wanted when he was 16, she said.
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.
At last we realized that these two young people were capable of making a choice for themselves once they moved to their new location and found a home. That’s when it hit us: a gift card to one of the stores where they had registered would be the perfect. They could use it when they knew what they needed. The bride and groom were delighted.