Dear Etiquetteer:
I guess I’m showing my age. When you went to a wedding, you brought a wedding present. Much to my chagrin, at a recent wedding, my mother and myself were the only ones to bring a present. The “cool” thing to do is just give them money in their card.
I find it to be impersonal, and once the money is spent you don’t have anything you can say “That was a present from my aunt.” When my husband and I got married, and had a reception about a month later, we said no gifts. But of course, we got several pairs of engraved champagne glasses. Every newlywed should receive those!
Dear Gifting:
Wedding presents have changed because a Happy Couple’s needs are no longer what they were. Starting roughly 50 years ago, the trend for couples to Live Together First means that they already have all the kitchen appliances and other domesticities often given as wedding gifts. Sadly, the dinner party is no longer the cornerstone of American social life; there goes all that beautiful china, silver, and crystal Etiquetteer loves so much. Finally, Brides Today can be so uppity about getting anything that looks like it might have belonged to their grandmothers. Etiquetteer trusts that this is Just a Phase, and in another ten years the trend will revert back to heirlooms.
Etiquetteer recognizes in you a kindred spirit by the way you use the sentence “That was a present from my aunt.” Heirlooms and “family pieces” lend so much special resonance to a household. They help tell our stories as part of our families, both birth and chosen. But there are ways and ways to deliver a sentence. “That was a present from my aunt” can convey derision as much as affection.
Etiquetteer’s Dear Mother (may she rest in peace), never disposed of a wedding gift whether she used it or not. (Etiquetteer remembers discovering only after her death a large and elaborate American eagle door knocker engraved with the family name. It was never used, but never disposed of.) And in C.S. Lewis’s The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, Edmund and Lucy are looking at a painting in the back bedroom of their aunt’s house. “Aunt Alberta didn’t like it at all (that was why it was put away in a little back room upstairs), but she couldn’t get rid of it because it had been a wedding present from someone she did not want to offend.”
If you prefer to give a gift instead of cash, then by all means do so, considering in advance both the tastes of the Happy Couple and the condition of your wallet. But Dear Mother taught Etiquetteer that wedding gifts should never be brought to the wedding, but sent in advance to the home of the bride (or her parents). That way there’s less for someone to tote away from the site of the wedding banquet, which is generally not at someone’s home any more.
Etiquetteer wishes you joy in choosing wedding gifts that are received with joy and acknowledged promptly with handwritten Perfect Propriety.