5 Tips for Dealing with Wedding Gifts
If you’re reading this, you’re probably engaged or a newlywed. Congrats! It’s one of the most wonderful seasons of life. People want to celebrate you, which often means buying you things. As fun as this sounds, it can quickly become overwhelming. As a newlywed who had a longer engagement due to COVID, I took note on the dos and don’ts for handling wedding gifts. See below for my top five tips to keep the gift receiving process fun, not overwhelming!
1. Register smart
The best thing you can do is register as early as possible. People will want to give you gifts ASAP, and if you can point them to a registry, you are more likely to end up with items you want and need, as opposed to a random collection of nonfunctional stuff. Registry building sites like Zola and Over the Moon have handy checklists that are a great tool for determining what you need. However, make sure you are intentional about your registry. Do you live in an apartment with no plans to move to a home with a yard? Maybe pass on that fancy outdoor grill. Will you be inheriting China in the foreseeable future? Probably a good idea not to register for a brand new set. Sit down with your partner and be honest about what you’ll actually use. This isn’t the time to will yourself into being a baker. If you’re not making pies now, you probably won’t be after you’re married.
2. Ship the items to you
This might be a controversial one, but I recommend getting the items shipped directly to you from the beginning. Depending on whether you and your partner live together, you will need to decide who will receive the gifts. My partner and I lived together pre-wedding, so we had the gifts shipped directly to us. I’m from the south, and it’s a big tradition to have the gifts shipped to the bride’s parents, where they would then display them for “sip and sees.” My mom isn’t the most organized and this option just wasn’t practical for us, so I had all the gifts shipped to me. This helped me keep tabs on what we received and made for quick and easy returns.
3. Open the gifts and start using them
I made a conscious decision that, no matter when we received gifts, we would open them and put them to use. Life is short, dinner parties are precious (especially in a post-COVID world), and the “right” time to use your good homewares is now. I’ve had clients who have left wedding gifts unopened for years and who have hired me to open them because the task of unpacking and finding new homes for the dozens of gifts was too daunting. We received gifts over a year before our wedding and are still receiving them three weeks after. Opening the gifts immediately comes with many benefits: you immediately find a place for the items; if you don’t like it, you can return it in real time; you learn if what you registered for is practical or if you need to rethink what’s on the registry; you can stay on top of your thank you notes; you get to use new fun things; you don’t end up with a mountain of gifts to sort through.
4. Always be editing
Most likely, you’re going to receive upgrades of items you already own. A nice cast iron skillet to replace your iffy college non-stick pan; upgraded flatware to replace your mismatched forks and knives. As much as you might want to hang onto the older stuff “just in case,” please donate it. Or gift it to a friend. Or both. I live in an apartment, and every time we received and upgrade of something we already had, I’d post a “curb alert” on our apartment forum, place the item in the hall, and within an hour, someone would come get the old item. I am a huge proponent of giving your old items a chance to live their lives as useful tools in others’ lives. I haven’t ever regretted giving away a kitchen item, and the space that remains gets filled with our registry items that we picked out and love. Clients will often ask “well, what if I need 2 roasting pans because I’m roasting 2 turkeys for a huge Thanksgiving?” My answer is always: call your friend and ask to borrow their roasting pan. I promise someone will have one.
5. Don’t stress
I have to include this one in here. You will likely register for silly things that you later regret. You will likely end up with a pile of gifts from the actual wedding from family and friends. You will forget to return something. The goal here isn’t perfection, it’s to process the gifts intentionally to prevent a mountain from building up. The most important thing is that you and your partner enjoy this gifting process together and take the time to laugh at any mishaps.
As always, if you find yourself overwhelmed with wedding gifts, preparing to combine households, or you’re just having trouble working out how to store everything, contact us at Sunday Plans and we will get you sorted and settled.