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My husband and I will have been married for twelve years this coming March. Twelve years – I can’t believe we made it! We started out as mere children, with no idea what the future held in store. Now, having matured and grown together, we have two happy, healthy children, a rambling old house, a pile of debt and each other.

This day was considered very special in our house. As young children, we would count our pennies and coins with care, since we wanted to gift our parents the best anniversary present ever! The perfect card was hunted out, even if it took weeks to do so! And best of all, we bought all the ingredients for a cake and baked it ourselves! Truly their wedding anniversary was something to look forward to!

I remember one year, during a time period when our mother was in love with everything wicker and rattan, we found what we considered to be the best gift ever! In a little, whimsical gift shop in town, in the very front window sat a little wicker basket. Inside the basket were five coaster, each with an intricate wicker frame. The centre of each coaster had an asian-inspired water color painting, protected behind glass. My sisters and I were in love! This would indeed be our very best wedding anniversary present we had ever found for our parents! We entered the store, wide-eyed and shyly went to the customer service desk to ask about the price. We found out that the coaster set was only $7.50! That left us with just over $3.00 after tax – plenty to pay for gift wrapping and maybe even a bow!

Like all families, ours had their fights and arguments too. During one such fight which threatened to turn violent, our mother swiped one of the coffee tables with her arm. The coasters were placed on that table and came down with a crash! It seemed like our esteem and love for our parents lay shattered near the table! The event still fills me with sadness!

In the end, our parents stuck together. There were more storms and arguments along the way, but almost every year we managed to pull together some sort of celebration in honor of their years together. Sometimes it would just be a card with best wishes; other years we’d go all out and spring for an anniversary gift. These later gifts cost much more money than the wedding anniversary presents we would select as children, however, the coaster set of many years ago, is still remembered fondly for the love and care behind the gift and the thought that went into it. And when we do visit our parents home, up on a shelf, away from any angry outbursts, sits that little coaster set. It maybe a little bit dusty, and there are a few scratches and broken bits. But, it still holds testament to our parents marriage and the years they’ve spent together.

The same love and fondness for wedding anniversary celebrations has passed on to our children. They too enjoy creating that special card and baking a cake year after year. And each year of course, brings a special anniversary gift from both of them!

You are searching for the non-traditional wedding gift. You want something totally different that will elicit the oohs and ahas of everyone present. Of course, you could go search the couple’s registry and pick something from there, but then your gift wouldn’t be that unique, would it?

Here are some tips to help you come up with some great, unique wedding gift ideas.

Ask yourself the following questions:

-what do you know about the couple?
-what do they like?
-where are they planning to spend their honeymoon?
-what’s their personality?
-what is their lifestyle?

The answers to these questions can give you ideas for a gift that displays your thoughtfulness and care.

Here are just a few gift ideas to ponder:

• Gift Certificates to a spa for the bride and groom are great before or after the wedding. The wedding day is often stressful, so you could offer a day at the spa to prepare them for the wedding day. Or, they could use it just after their honeymoon, as they prepare to resume their regular activities.

• As an alternative for the day at the spa, you could give them a spa in a basket, including monogrammed robes, towels, and a few other relaxing items, like candles, bath and body lotions, some romantic music, and even engraved wine glasses accompanied by a bottle of wine for a special evening at home.

• Keepsake Box – As time goes by, memories begin to fade, and what better and more unique gift than a special box where they can safely store all those precious mementos that become more cherished as the years go by? This box is perfect for things like: marriage license, special photos, place cards, vows, and all those other special keepsakes that often get lost as time passes.

• Silver-Plated Picture Frames – the perfect way to display favorite photos of their special day. Have them engraved with the couple’s names and the wedding date for a treasured memory.

• Etched Glass Wedding Invitation – Have their wedding invitation, or other special verse engraved on a glass sculpture. This will be treasured for years to come, and definitely unique. Or, for a little variation, get the actual invitation, and mount it on a glass plate and finish it with matching colored paint.

• Honeymoon Photo Album – this could be made out of wood, with something like “A Honeymoon to Remember” engraved on the cover: a perfect place to capture those wonderful honeymoon memories.

Now you are ready to give the perfect wedding gift to your friends and family

Many brides love to give personalized wedding favors to their guests on their wedding day. Personalized wedding favors are an excellent idea because the couples are able to add their names on the favors and also add their wedding date to it. This is an important factor to make their wedding favors stand out since the guests will easily remember the wedding they attended. Many people like to go for weddings especially women and over years they accumulate many wedding favors. Sadly, some of these favors become indistinguishable because they were not personalized.

Giving our personalized wedding favors solves many issues for the couple because their guests simply have to check out the gift to realize who gave it to them. As a result, they will be more likely to remember the finer details of the wedding because they got personalized wedding favor. In this article, we seek to provide you with more information on the different types of personalized wedding favors that you can try out as well as give you useful information for giving personalized wedding favors.

One thing that you should never forget is to plan ahead when giving away personalized wedding favors. Personalized wedding favors require special processing compared to other normal types of favors that can be bought in any supermarket. Even if you plan to buy favors that are already manufactured, remember that they might still need to undergo additional processed to personalize them. This might require time which you is short. Your order will likely take a few extra days to be processed. Also factor in the that the manufacturer can have pending orders beofre yours that will cause further delays.

The time it takes for the personalized orders to be completed depends largely on the size of your order or how busy the manufacturer is so it might take 2 days or even weeks for the orders to be completed. For those of you that are in a hurry, rush orders are another option but you will be forced to pay more. Rush orders will likely cost you twice or triple the cost of each favor.

Any wedding favor can be personalized. Printing the names of the bride and groom on candy wrappers, pictures frames, fortune cookies or even candle holders is one of the widely known methods of personalizing wedding favors.

However, there are other methods of personalizing wedding favors other than having the names of the bride and groom and wedding dates. The other option is having the items personalized with a quotation from their favorite bible verse, song or even poem.

Give out edible favors is another funky way of creating personalized wedding favors. Lots of different types of edible favors can be personalized. A good example id photo cookies.

Edible cookies are made in many bakeries based on the picture you send to them. You send the photo either by email or they scan it from within their systems. Apart from the photo, the bride and groom can have their favorite quote, love song or wedding date printed on the cookies!

When giving out wedding favors, the wrapping of the gift can be personalized. Couples tend to wrap wedding favors in a nice white paper. To make the wrapping more personal, they can include ribbons that have their names imprinted onthem. Shoppers buy these either precut or in one continuous ribbon. The precut ribbons can turn out to be more expensive but the advantage is that they save the person lots of time.