Wedding Rings

The Best & The Worst: Gifts

Question:

Worst?  Dalek shaped cookie jar (exterminate!) Best – Jay says my mom covering our budget overage as a surprise on the morning of the wedding (in the form of a hidden check as we were dressing).  Probably both our favorites was a set of three hand painted pillows with Erte designs, two small, one large, with the big one including our names and the date of our wedding.  Hand made by the friends who gave them to us, they really seemed the most personal of all the presents. Denisen (who married her sweet fellow 8/10/96)

Response:

>(Username) writes: > >So let’s have it! What’s the best gift you’ve gotten thus far for your > >wedding (or engagement) and what’s the worst? > >Just Curious. >The best:  A fire extinguisher >The worst:  there wasn’t a worst

Engagement Presents The VERY best:  gift of professional cleaners to houseclean my old house after the movers left. After working with the movers & packing all day I got to relax a bit before driving across the country. Wedding Presents: The best:  33 gift wrapped boxes each with sayings on love and marriage …. to be opened one per day for our honeymoon month ….. wonderful!  A gift that gets smaller every day, never needs dusting, and brings us daily smiles.  :) Next best:  a framed artist’s proof personalized for us by the artist, given by the artist and some friends The worst:  an acrylic photo frame …. just not our "taste" in frames at all Kathi & Craig  10-15-96

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>Worst gift would have to be champagne flutes #12-24 from William >Sonoma – 2 people, it seems, were walking around 2 different sonoma >shops on the same day, with the same list – and one of them got us 4 >flutes, bringing our total up to 12 – the other person got us 12 more >champagne flutes – which we just didn’t have room for : ( >They’ve been turned into very nice pasta bowls.

We had on our registry 16 wine glasses and ended up with 32 wine glasses, but only 4 champagne glasses. 12 of the wine glasses got turned into 4 cordial glasses, a knife steel and …something else. My mom bought us the whole flatware set even in a box. But we got 1 plate, 1 salad plate, the creamer and sugar and a serving bowl from our stoneware pattern. We ended up buying 12 place settings of the china later from money sent by my step-grandmother (only met her once). We opened presents in front of everyone on Sunday and it got pretty funny as we kept opening box after box of glasses. So it wasn’t a bad present, just funny. The best present… was definitely everyone being there. And the two women (MOH and bridesmaid) who made my dress, one made the lace, the other sewed it. And the cake a coworker made… the large monetary present from my dad was a complete surprise and welcome. Mostly I was just touched. We could have done the wedding without it, but he felt it was his "social responsibility". Which coming from my dad was very sweet and a little mind boggling. The worst… a cheesy, pastel colored, framed 9 square grid of "love is X" and "love isn’t" with cutesy little drawings. It’s just not us at all… though I do love the cousins who gave it to us, so it’s o.k. (I don’t think they’re on the net.) I finally put something else in the frame recently and it works in our guest room quite nicely.         Johanna —         Computer User Services Reed College –>j/lnghlm: It’s not just for Elbonian pizza anymore

Response:

(Username) writes: >So let’s have it! What’s the best gift you’ve gotten thus far for your >wedding (or engagement) and what’s the worst? >Just Curious.

The best:  A fire extinguisher The worst:  there wasn’t a worst Suzie (& Phil) July 13, 1996 — Suzanne Glass                       Santa Fe, NM                             http://www.rt66.com/~glass/

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So far – Most surprising – $1000 from his grandfather =:o Best not yet received – Handmade quilt from my aunt – she makes awesome quilts and she asked me months ago what colors we were having in the bedroom.  My mom has dropped the hint enough that I know there will be a quilt from her.  I can’t wait – this will be the best gift, I’m sure. Worst – No bad, strange or odd ones yet… Funniest – 4 silver place settings (from Mark’s parent’s neighbors, whom I’ve never even met – what a surprise!  His mother just kept saying, FMIL:  "No Mark, there are 4 pieces of silverware in each box – they must have sent one setting".   M:  "No, Mom, we counted the boxes…  there are four 5-piece settings here".   FMIL:  "No, Mark, your’e wrong – they couldn’t have sent ***4**** settings!".   M:  "Well, Mom – Kellie and I are here, we opened the box, then the boxes inside that one and there are 4 salad and dinner forks, 4 knifes, 4 soup and teaspoons- really, there are 4". FMIL:  "No, there can’t be!".  etc…. It was quite amusing.  Now he understands the frustration!) kellie

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>So let’s have it! What’s the best gift you’ve gotten thus far for your >wedding (or engagement) and what’s the worst? >Just Curious. >Thanks for the input in advance, >Terri

The worst:  6 of the ugliest, cheesiest placemats and napkins ever seen.   They looked just like those plastic-y, quilted mats you see at Denny’s and they smelled musty and smoky, which makes me suspect that the giver (a famous garage sale shopper) got them used, somewhere. Ugh! The best:  I can’t choose just one, I have a selection: A beautiful wooden box with a hinged top, shaped to look like an oversized book. It’s a memory box to put mementos in. My mother gave us 6 of my grandmother’s silver place settings, which I have loved since childhood. I always volunteered to polish the silver for holiday dinners and I look forward to using the silver for my family dinners in the future. My aunt knitted us a gorgeous, 100% wool, ivory afghan as a wedding quilt.   It’s beautiful workmanship and very practical too. My parents in-law gave us 4 of our silverware place settings, which for some reason no one else bought off our registry (same price as our dishes, so not a money issue. I guess people just wanted to give dishes)  I guess the best classification comes here b/c they got us what we wanted, but they saw what hadn’t been given already and got that for us. Very thoughtful. Kirsten Krebs Thomson

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> We didn’t get any great white elephants…although some were, shall we > say, more utilitarian than others? Like the fabric – Handmade! – plastic > grocery bag holder.

We didn’t get anywhite elephants either, but we DID get an elephant present – an Arthur’s Court pewter bowl with an elephants-walking-around-it design on the rim (actually, going almost all the way thru the inside). But our best gift, other than the china cabinet from my parents, and the armoire & trunk from Aaron’s parents, was the Fertility God & Goddess from barely-pre-Columbian Mexico, which were given to us by a collector/dealer friend of my parents. Worst gift would have to be champagne flutes #12-24 from William Sonoma – 2 people, it seems, were walking around 2 different sonoma shops on the same day, with the same list – and one of them got us 4 flutes, bringing our total up to 12 – the other person got us 12 more champagne flutes – which we just didn’t have room for : ( They’ve been turned into very nice pasta bowls. heidi & aaron since 10/19/96

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**: So let’s have it! What’s the best gift you’ve gotten thus far for your **: wedding (or engagement) and what’s the worst? ** Best gift – we got a lot of really cool things, like pottery from two of our favorite local artists, or a set of stainless cookware, or a ceramic knife (we gave the giver a penny for the old superstition!). MY favorite was the sixpence and old handkerchief given to me by a co-worker’s wife. I had never met her until the wedding, but she sent me a lovely card (after having her husband ask me if I’d mind her offering these things) with them inside. We also were given a quilt that my great-grandmother made before she passed away 16 years ago. My mom and grandma finished it for her. She made one for each of the great-grandchildren to be given as wedding gifts…that was a really good one. I guess the ones from the heart or that weren’t off the registry, but got a little more creative were the most fun. Oh, the one from the couple who went to Williams-Sonoma and loaded a box full of cool kitchen gadgets…very nice. Most unusual – a Royal Crown Derby Chipmunk….perhaps a wry commentary on the Ohio State University’s unofficial rodent? We didn’t get any great white elephants…although some were, shall we say, more utilitarian than others? Like the fabric – Handmade! – plastic grocery bag holder. Amy — Amy Breslin Program Assistant THE Ohio State University Materials Science and Engineering Dept.

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> We didn’t get any great white elephants…although some were, shall we > say, more utilitarian than others? Like the fabric – Handmade! – plastic > grocery bag holder. > Amy

Hey Amy- We got one of those, too!!  Brown and orange calico print with a scalloped lace edge and a little poem attached.  You’ve gotta love Great Aunt Ethel….  ;-) Bet you didn’t get any yarn-covered clothes hangers, though, did ya? -Leslie (who gets teary when she thinks about how much love these wonderful women put into their very thoughtful handmade gifts–makes store-bought crystal seem thoughtless)

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So let’s have it! What’s the best gift you’ve gotten thus far for your wedding (or engagement) and what’s the worst? Just Curious. Thanks for the input in advance, Terri

Response:

>So let’s have it! What’s the best gift you’ve gotten thus far for your >wedding (or engagement) and what’s the worst? >Just Curious. >Thanks for the input in advance, >Terri

The best – my engagement ring! Amethyst set in white gold The worst – haven’t gotten anything yet! (sniff) —    If trees could scream, would we be so cavalier about cutting them down?  We might, if they screamed all the time, and for no good reason.

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: So let’s have it! What’s the best gift you’ve gotten thus far for your : wedding (or engagement) and what’s the worst? We’ve gotten only two official engagement gifts, but I’m willing to bet they’ll be our favourites (maybe because we aren’t likely to get any others?  We’ve been engaged 6 months but with 30 months to go). My fiance’s favourite engagement gift is the clock in a brass casing from his grandparents, which has a plaque on it, reading, "Barbara and Julian, 16 May, 1996′ My favourite is the silver plated huge oval frame, from his mother, which has a plate on it, reading, "European engagement, May 16, 1996" Both are really sentimental, ‘heirloom’ type gifts, not expensive but with high sentimental value (especially since they’re from family).   An unofficial engagement gift is our Waterford crystal ring holder, which I bought on my mom’s credit card account when we visited the factory in Ireland.  I needed a nice holder for my beautiful ring, and we rationalized that Mom and Dad would ‘like to get it for us’.  Kinda pretenious, I know, but I know my parents well, and don’t think they minded! My sister’s least favourite gifts were from the shower attened by my mother’s friends.  She just couldn’t use the crock pot or the sandwich maker (I fell heir to the latter, which suited me fine.  I make 3 minute muffins in it so I guess even bad wedding presents don’t have to go to waste).  –Barbara

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Filed under: White Gold Wedding Ring