ULTIMATE the WEDDING GIFT GUIDE

WRITTEN BY: HOLLIANN CONKLIN

The season is upon us for celebrating the love and commitments of our nearest and dearest friends and family. Wedding season is a beautiful time of year, with no shortage of opportunity to honor the special couples in our lives.

In the summer after my sophomore year, one of my sorority sisters, Callie, tied the knot with her college sweetheart, Josh. The two were the ideal match, a perfect pairing in terms of temperament and life goals. They’re still together, now living just a stone’s throw from our alma mater where Josh serves as the lead pastor for their church and Callie directs the choir at the county middle school.

Their life together is a near exact portrait of what everyone would have guessed when they first said, “I do”. They're the salt of the Earth kind of people that you just can’t help but love from the first time you meet them which is exactly why I was so elated to curate a gift reflective of their beautiful love story.

A couple of weeks after the duo drove from their reception, I got an unexpected call from Callie. All was well in their world, she would tell me, they had enjoyed their extended honeymoon immensely before returning home to resume normal life. There was only one issue, Callie was curious about the gift I had chosen for them. She wanted to know what, exactly, had been in it.

Enclosed in the carefully wrapped box I had given them was an assortment of gifts that only a broke college student would think to give let alone, in hindsight, enjoy getting. A cookbook, a DVD featuring the “Best of Gallagher”, and an assortment of fresh fruit which, as it turns out, would stay fresh only for approximately less than the two weeks it took Callie and Josh to open the box. What a rotten gift I had given to them, both figuratively and literally.

Embarrassment turned to laughter and eventually a life lesson in using logic before creativity when it comes to interacting with the world around me. Whether you’re attending your own sorority sister’s wedding to her beautiful bride-to-be, your brother’s wedding to your future sister-in-law, or honoring the wedding if your best friend and his handsome partner, here are suggestions for how you can combine thoughtfulness and appropriate gift giving for the wedding season.