So What Did You Stick a Bow On?

Margaret Maron

Although June is the traditional month for weddings, July and August have edged it out these last two years, which means that many of us will be shopping over the summer for the perfect present to give the happy couple.

Please!  Do stop and think about the happy couple in question before you stray from their registry and go off on a tangent.  Yes, you think bobble-headed wine stoppers are screamingly funny, but would your niece and her groom really prefer a set of them over a piece of china in their chosen pattern?

I know, I know—you march to your own drum and you think wedding registries are too materialistic.  Nevertheless, unless you're absolutely sure they would be charmed to learn that you've donated a goat in their names to a deserving village  somewhere, please send the carving board the bride and groom have checked off on their Bed, Bath and Beyond wish list.

Some couples are modest in selecting where they register, others opt for Saks and treat the concept as if it's their last year to believe in Santa Claus. Several of us were amused when a bride in the family checked off a beautiful breakfast-in-bed tray.  "Yeah, like that's ever gonna happen," snickered the groom's sister.

Still, it's interesting to see the sweetly naïve expectations of marriage that such registries reveal: breakfast in bed followed by gourmet meals prepared in a celebrity chef's cookware and served by candlelight with linen napkins and crystal goblets of wine chilled in a silver cooler?  Never mind that they've been living together for a year and buy paper plates and napkins by the hundred-count.

I recently surveyed several of my friends to learn what they remember of the presents they received.

Fellow TLC-er Diane Chamberlain (http://DianeChamberlain.com/blog): "We were hippies in the early 70s and I loved the fondue pot, the cheese-making kit and a copy of Laurel's Kitchen (THE vegetarian cookbook of the day). The sterling silver bowl from my aunt went straight back to the store for a refund. Now that's the one thing I wish I still had."

Mary Kay Andrews'  Summer Rental launches this week, so check her website for an appearance near you.  She remembers without fondness the boxed bottle of expensive-looking brandy they received.  "I tucked it away for our first anniversary, but when I got it out to open, I discovered it was actually just a stinkin' CANDLE made to look like a bottle!"

Susan Dunlap (SusanDunlapMysteries.com):  "Sadly, we received a number of cookbooks, given by friends who either hoped I'd learn from my failures or just feared they'd be invited again."

Sarah Shaber, (www.SarahShaber.com), whose wonderful new book, Louise's War, will be published next month: "Steve and I got a glug-glug pitcher—green, shaped like a fish, and designed so that when you poured liquid out of it, it glug-glugged noisily. It sat in a kitchen cabinet for years because we felt guilty about throwing it away.  Thank goodness for charity yard sales!" 

Bren Bonner Witchger (http://TheVinylCall.blogspot.com/): "We were given an exceedingly ugly (and to me disturbing) statue of the Infant of Prague from an elderly relative.  The glazing job was bad and the poor thing was cross-eyed, plus it was decked out in such sparkly (and no doubt itchy) finery that I felt sorry for it.  We moved it from place to place in our first apartment and 'cross-eyed Jesus' became a running joke with my husband's sibs. ('Oh yeah?   Go tell it to Cross-eyed Jesus.')   We re-gifted it to the next one of them to get married and it got passed on to each newlywed couple from there.  I lost track of poor Cross-eyed Jesus and now wish I knew what became of him."

Speaking of re-gifting, if you decide to off-load an unwanted Christmas or anniversary gift onto the newlyweds, please check through all the tissue paper to make sure you haven't left the original signed card from your Aunt Wendy in the box.

Gift receipts are a thoughtful touch in case your blender is the third one they've received.  (I myself like to give utility ladders, a dolly, or file cabinets—things you won't see duplicated on the usual gift table.)

Except for a set of ugly brown-checked towels, the only gift I actively disliked was a cutesy wooden wall plaque with chickens and a spinning wheel, hand-carved in Taiwan.  Somehow it accidentally wound up in splinters before the first year was out.

But I still have and use two or three times a week, the copper-bottom double-boiler and the cast iron skillets.  "Not very fancy," admitted the classmate who gave me one of them, "but I couldn't cook without mine."  (Me, either.)

What about you?  What's the best/worst wedding present you ever gave or received?