7/7/11

Wedding Gift Lists - Which service is right for you..?

By David Harper


If you are planning to get married you may be considering putting together a wedding gift list of presents you would like to receive from your friends and family, but what options are there for you? We have put together this article to help you make the right decision for you.

You can let a big department store look after the wedding wish list on your behalf. Your guests can contact the shop directly and by quoting your present wish list reference number, guests can selects a gift from the Wish list that you compiled earlier. With this method you can arrange home delivery. This method will save you the hassle of transporting your gifts home and you can choose the delivery time that suits you, very handy if you are leaving for your honeymoon!

Some couples designate a person from their family to be in charge of managing their wedding list instead of running it themselves. They include their list in their wedding invitations; and include the contact number of the the person responsible for looking after the list inside. This task could be given to a brother or sister, or perhaps the grooms mother as she might not be directly involved with the organisation of the wedding. The guests then call the number and tells the selected person which gift they'll purchase, and the co-ordinator crosses it off the list.

If you have enough time you could consider putting together a note book of required gifts and send it out to the wedding guests with one gift per page. All guests then select a gift, removes a page from the book and then passes the gift ideas book on to the next guest on the list. Apart from being quite a cute idea, this does admittedly take time, and can have many problems. If some people take a long time choosing their gifts, this will reduce the time other guests have to make their own minds up. One way to help things move along is to designate a motivated individual to keep a check on where the list is up to and keep reminding people to make their decision.

Gift Vouchers are an easy way out for people unwilling to compile a Wish list. You could ask for vouchers for your favourite retailer. You can even use them to help towards the price of more costly items which you might have felt cheeky putting them on the list, or ask for vouchers to help towards the honeymoon costs.

With the boom of the internet, a new and flexible solution has recently become popular, to have your wedding gift list online. The main advantage of using an online gift list website is that you're not tied to having items from just one retailer as you would be with the original more traditional department store route. All you generally have to do is register with the online service, install their little toolbar Widget or bookmarklet, browse the internet as normal and then easily add gift ideas from whichever retailers you want. Once the wedding gift list is complete the fastest way of getting your family and friends to visit the website and view your list is simply email them an invitation. The email would include a specific list ID and event date to allow your guests to access the list, or you could simply include these details in the posted invite. The website keeps a record of what's been bought so that you will not get lots of duplicate items, and everybody knows that they're buying a present that will be really appreciated.

When putting together any wedding list it is important to remember to give as much information as you can with the item to help your guest. This should cover things like: brand, model number, colour, size, quantity and price. Always include items covering a wide range of price brackets. This makes it easier for people to spend as much as they are comfortable doing. Once the wedding is over, it goes without saying that it is only polite to send out thank you cards to acknowledged the generosity and thoughtfulness of your friends and family.




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