Wedding Planner Blog

Some friends of ours got married in mid-September and we made every effort to make it to their wedding.  We live out-of-province, so the trip would be quite a distance.  We thought about driving but opted to fly, figuring that the cost would be more practical, then the time off work and utter exhaustion involved in driving the 2200 kilometers to get over there.

Unexpectedly, I ended up in the hospital, just days before the wedding.  We were already in a panic about what to buy for the wedding present, and now I was completely out of commission.  My husband would now be responsible for choosing a nice gift on his own.  This might be a problem because we didn’t even have a good wedding present idea yet.  After much discussion, we determined that he would still attend the wedding despite me being hospitalized, since our friend’s wedding simply could not be missed.

The bride spoke with my husband two days before the wedding.  She graciously assured him that he was under no obligation to attend - that they would completely understand if he couldn’t make it.  She told him that if he did end up coming, that no wedding present was expected - that his presence, and the cost involved in getting there, would be more than enough of a gift.  But still, we felt moved to find the perfect wedding present.

At the last minute, after a long debate, we decided to give them a belated wedding present after my recovery.  My husband attended the beautiful wedding and had a wonderful time and I ended up being released from the hospital a few weeks later.

Now, it has been just over two months since the wedding, and as these things tend to go (at least in our household), we still haven’t sent a wedding present to our friends.  We both feel terrible, and the pressure and guilt are just making our lack of wedding present ideas worse!

Just this week, we finally struck upon two potential wedding present ideas for the perfect gift.  The work and care required for this to work will hopefully help to account for the amount of time it’s taken us to send them.

The first wedding present idea involves taking a thick length of copper wiring and untwisting several of the cables at one end.  I saw my father do this when I was a child. Then each thinner section of wire is partially untwisted and formed into branches and twigs, with the remaining untwisted wire, serving as the truck of a beautiful copper tree.  This tree would be planted in a terra cotta pot and secured in place with the sort of foam used in silk flower arranging.  Delicate leaves would be cut out from thin, copper plating.  Using a torch, they would then be attached to the branches.

Our second idea for a wedding present is to create a fairy tale of our friends’ lives so far and on into their future lives together.  My husband is a very experienced graphic designer and writer.  He has some solid ideas for the story line and a folder of beautiful artwork that would then be laid out and bound in an aged leather binding, complete with gold leaf embossing on the cover.

We love both wedding present ideas and hope to make some progress very soon.  Thankfully, our friends are very understanding and they value our friendship more than any wedding present we could dream of giving them.  It’s great to have friends such as these!