For instance, check out these gorgeous cufflinks. They feature a fragment of an antique map (in this case, Italy in 1899) encased under jewelry grade magnifying resin and set in a combination of sterling silver and stainless steel. I can imagine many a groom, groomsman, best man, or bridesman who would be delighted to wear these links on the big day… and use them again afterward. At just $26.00 a pair, they’re also very affordable.

Oh, and don’t worry if you’re not excited about Italy. There are plenty of other places represented in the shop, as well as similarly themed bracelets, pendants, and earrings.

In fact, these attendant gifts might just put your wedding on the map.

(ducks hurled tomatoes)

When sportswriter Pete Iorizzo recently married, several guests generously gave him and his bride checks as gifts. Ca-ching! Great news! While cold, hard cash is not the most romantic gift possible, it’s certainly a useful one.

Unfortunately, there was a catch when the bride headed down to Bank of America to deposit said checks in their joint checking account: the bank refused to accept the checks.

You see the checks were written to ‘Mr. and Mrs. Peter Iorizzo’ and the lady had chosen not to change her last name. The teller insisted that since she hadn’t changed her name there was no such person as Mrs. Peter Iorizzo, and so no check could be deposited with that name on it. The lady offered to produce her marriage license, but still the bank would have none of it. Discussion with higher ups at the bank offered no solution.

The next day Mr. Iorizzo went to the bank with the same results. Even when he pointed out this couldn’t be the first time the situation had been seen (some ten per cent of brides nationwide do not take their new spouse’s last name, and yet more choose to hyphenate), the manager of the branch insisted this was the first time in twenty years he’d seen such a thing.

I don’t know about you, but I know plenty of women who didn’t take their husband’s names. Yes, the rate is higher than average in California, and I do happen to live in probably the most liberal area of the state… but there are women in Utah and Montana and literally every state in the union who make the same choice I did to keep their own names. And even if a woman does choose to change her name, as most do, it’s mighty rare that the paperwork would all be done and new ID issued at the time a couple is depositing their wedding gift checks. How can this manager never have seen a new bride whose ID doesn’t match the checks before?

When Mr. Twistie and I were married nearly twenty years ago, we got a couple checks written to Mr. and Mrs. His Name His Name. We didn’t even have a joint account until we’d been married some three or four years, but we managed to get those checks dealt with sans any huge fuss. Mr. Twistie endorsed them, signed them ‘for deposit only’, explained to the teller that he’d just gotten married… and voila! Money in the account.

In the end, though, the happy couple did manage to work out their problem with Bank of America… by depositing their checks at a different branch, where they were faced with no hassle, no confusion, no problem. Oh, and where the teller congratulated them on their marriage.

The lesson learned here: some banks are dinosaurs. Find out whether yours is before you deposit any wedding checks. Oh, and if possible, spread the word on how the bride intends to style herself after the marriage… before people write you checks.

But because we’re human, we seem to have an innate need to complicate simple things. So let’s take a look at a couple myths about gifts that tend to complicate our lives and see what baggage we can unload right here and now to reduce bridal (and guestal!) stress.

Myth 1: Your Gift Should Cover Your Plate. This is probably the single most annoying myth going. It’s the kudzu of etiquette mythology. It’s a completely crap thing that nobody wants and is nearly impossible to eradicate. In fact, it’s the polar opposite of etiquette.

How the myth got started, I have no idea, but simply put this is the concept that you should spend at least as much on your gift to the happy couple as they spent on feeding and entertaining you. Because of this myth, many a person has missed the wedding of someone they love dearly or gone into debt to come up with a gift ‘grand’ enough to suit the purpose. This is horrible.

The reality is that etiquette requires no gift at all from wedding guests. A guest who arrives bearing nothing more than a heartfelt congratulatory note is being absolutely polite. What’s more, ‘cover your plate’ is an etiquette nightmare on more than one front. After all, it’s amazingly rude to try to sit down and calculate the precise amount of money someone spent on entertaining you! Miss Manners would have a very quiet fit about that, and rightly so.

Myth 2: It’s Rude To Put Expensive Things On Your Gift Registry. Funny, that, since one of the reasons gift registries got started in the first place was so that guests had a handy idea of what china and silver patterns the happy couple wanted. These things never came cheap.

Look, registries fall under the category of useful things etiquette turns a (mostly) blind eye toward so long as you don’t make a public spectacle of yourself about it. It’s along the lines of the letters to Santa you may have written as a child: it’s a wish list, not marching orders. And yes, it’s fine to put that big screen TV or professional grade stand mixer on your wish list… so long as you also remember that casserole dishes and washcloths and wooden spoons are good things to have, too. You know, sort of like how that letter to Santa included a box of new crayons as well as the pony you probably never got. But some kid out there did get a pony for Christmas, and you never know when several people will get together and chip in for that HD3-D TV!

Myth 3: It’s Rude To Give Things That Aren’t On the Registry. To this I can only say poppycock! With a side of balderdash! Remember where I said gift registries are like letters to Santa? Yeah, I bet you didn’t complain too badly when you got toys, games, and so on that you didn’t ask Santa to bring you. Sometimes the best gifts are the things you couldn’t have asked for because they weren’t in a catalogue or sitting on the shelf of a store.

Don’t get me wrong, I love the pots, pans, towels, sheets, and gadgets Mr. Twistie and I registered for and got. There are people I think of and thank silently every time I use the knife or pan they gave us. But I’m touched that there were also people who gave us their time and talents. One friend did a lovely counted cross stitch picture for us. She has since died, unfortunately, and it’s the only piece of her needlework I have. But because of it, she’s with me every day. Another good friend made us a fabulous original quilt with the story of our lives and our love on it. It’s absolutely unique and keeps us snuggly warm on winter nights. Yet another friend gave us one of his original paintings. You can’t register for stuff like that.

Myth 4: If You Don’t Want Gifts, Print a Note On Your Invitation. Oh no, no, no, no, no. Remember what I said in Myth 1 about how it’s perfectly polite to show up at a wedding with nothing but congratulations to offer? Yeah, that’s because wedding gifts – while popular and more than acceptable – are not required. Putting something in writing on your invitation tells everyone that you are expecting gifts, which is not terribly polite. Yes, I know you are expecting gifts, but this is one of those cases where it’s considered a little greedy looking to say so, even if what you’re saying is ‘look, I know you’re planning on giving me things, but I’d really rather you saved your money and forgot about it.’ Why? Because gifts are not actually required. They are an optional extra that the guest may choose to give. Saying ‘don’t give me one’ assumes that the optional is required until you release people from their obligation.

But what if you really don’t want gifts? Well, you get that word out the same way you do about where you’re registered: by word of mouth, sans a big announcement. Let everyone in your family and bridal party know that you really don’t need gifts, and let them quietly pass the word around your circle for you. This is also the proper way to let it be known that what you really want is cold, hard cash or donations to your favorite charity, too.

Myth 5: You Have a Year To Write Your Thank You Notes. Actually, the guests have a year to choose to give you a wedding gift… and that’s really not a terribly hard and fast rule, either. That quilt I mentioned earlier? Yeah, it didn’t actually wind up on our bed for about thirteen years. Long story, but we weren’t going to kick it out of bed for being a little late.

But thank you notes should be written as soon as possible. In fact, wedding gifts are most properly delivered to the bride’s home before the wedding. The old tradition was to display the wedding gifts at the wedding, though that has – thankfully! – fallen into disfavor and mostly disappeared over the last few decades. Still, since the idea behind wedding gifts is to help the couple set up their new home with everything they need, the idea is still also that they ought to arrive before the wedding day so that when the happy couple return from their honeymoon, they can go straight to their already stocked home.

That means that if anyone follows that aspect of wedding etiquette, you should stand at the ready with stationery, stamps, and your best penmanship to send out those thank you notes before the wedding day. Any gifts that arrive the day of the wedding or after your return from your honeymoon… do your best to get those thanks out within the first two or three months of your marriage. And always remember, two people got married, so unless your new spouse broke a dominant wrist while rock climbing… you can share that particular load freely.

I know the thought causes an amazing range of emotions from absolute joy to abject terror to… well… whatever it happens to stir up in you. Some people think gifts are the best part of getting married, while others would rather discuss having public rectal surgery than consider the possibility of more stuff in their lives.

Honestly, I don’t care which camp you’re in or whether you’re somewhere in between. This is not my concern. After all, I did my thing. It’s done. This isn’t about how you should feel about wedding gifts or whether it’s okay to want or not want them. This is about the practical aspects of handling this particular part of getting married. If you want pressies, that’s great. If you don’t want them, that’s great, too. But the fact is you will have to deal with the question, and with people who make choices that don’t necessarily match your wishes.

Here’s the deal.

1: You may express your wishes… but there’s a proper way to do it, and then there are not so proper ways. Never, ever, ever mention gifts on your wedding invitation. Even if what you want to print on them is that you don’t want presents, it’s not the right way to do it. You see, even though many of us think of wedding gifts as an obligation, they are not actually required. To put anything about them on your invitation is to assume that people are getting you gifts, and to make them feel obligated even more than they are by expectation. This is profoundly rude.

So how do you correctly get across the idea that you’d rather not get more stuff? How do you explain that you’d prefer a gift to your favorite charity in your name? Or even that you prefer cold, hard cash to china settings? First off, you don’t register for gifts anywhere. Then you tell everyone in your wedding party what your preferences are. If anyone asks you directly or asks a member of your family or wedding party, you/they can then say ‘Oh, Jared and Pansy already have so much, they’d really prefer a donation be sent to greyhound rescue in their name’ or ‘You know, Joe and Penny are in the market for a house and they could really use help scraping up a down payment’ or ‘Really, Jeff and Patty consider your attendance and support the most precious gift they could receive.’ As for registry information, it is passed the same way: by word of mouth.

2: Of course expressing your wishes does not actually obligate anyone to follow them. Sure, you told people not to give you gifts, but then stuff starts arriving anyway. It happens. As I said, gifts are not obligatory, but many people would no more consider arriving at a wedding sans a gift than they would think of skydiving without a parachute. That means you need to be ready to accept a few gifts even if you didn’t want them in the first place. Be gracious, send a thank you note, and if you really, really hate it, quietly sell it at your first garage sale or exchange it for something you can use. This goes for things that weren’t on the registry list you made, too.

3: If you do want gifts and choose to register, think about what is convenient for your guests as well as what you want. More and more of us have our friends and family scattered all over the country, or even all over the world. Consider registering online or at a place that has stores everywhere you have guests coming from. You can even register in more than one place… just try to register for different things at the different places so you don’t wind up with three times the towels you need!

Also make sure you have things in a variety of price points. Putting a few small kitchen gadgets or a couple terra cotta pots for your herb garden offers a welcome option to financially strapped friends and relatives. On the other hand, I consider putting a really pricey thing or two on the list something along the lines of that pony I kept asking Santa to bring. Don’t expect it to happen… but there’s nothing wrong with admitting you’d like a 3-D TV or some sterling silver. And you never know, a group of your buddies might just decide to band together to give you something you really didn’t expect.

After all, while I never did, some little girl out there got her Christmas pony.

4: While gifts are properly sent to the bride before the wedding, guests will bring gifts to the wedding reception itself. You see, the happy couple shouldn’t have to deal with the logistics of carting home piles of gifts when they may be in a hurry to catch a flight… or even just catch some Zs after the big event, and that’s why gifts are best given before the wedding. But goodness knows I’ve been That Person carrying a carefully wrapped gift into the reception. Someone will bring a check or a cookware set or a garden gnome with them.

Set up a table off in a corner to hold the gifts, and then make sure someone is keeping an eye on it at all times. The more public your wedding reception site, the more important that pair of eyes becomes. Our wedding was held in private on a spot that took some work to find, so our gift table was pretty safe. But if your reception is being held in a hotel or a restaurant, then safety first! It’s not the most common thing, but people have been known to come into someone’s large reception held in a public place and help themselves to some of those packages… particularly the slender envelope kind.

Oh, and resist the temptation to open your gifts publicly. Duplicate gifts (and these will happen, even with a registry and careful monitoring) will be opened in front of the people who gave them, and sometimes it’s hard to reign in a look of horror at a really, really unwelcome gift. There’s just too much chance of embarrassment for all involved.

After the party is over, make sure you’ve designated someone to cart all the gifts to a place where they’ll be safe and sound until you have a chance to open them at your leisure.

5: Yes, you have to send thank you notes. Even if you weren’t expecting it, even if you hate it with the fury of a thousand raging Pamplonan bulls, even if you opened it in front of the giver and squealed in delight, you still have to send thank you notes. Just get some pretty cards, make sure you have plenty of stamps on hand, use your nicest pen, and don’t let your new spouse off the hook. After all, these are wedding presents and two of you got married.

Keep it simple, mention how you intend to use the gift (or get appropriately vague if you’re ditching it at the earliest possible convenience), and do your best to appreciate the sentiment and effort, even if the outcome isn’t what you’d hoped for.

I grew up around nesting dolls, so how could I not love Matryoshka wedding favors? It’s a wedding favor that guests will be much more likely to keep, I think. More so than an armless bride with fire for a head or towel cake. What’s not to like? Matryoshka are cute and fun and decorative in a way that doesn’t require color matching, so make, I think, ideal wedding favors.

Matryoshka!

How could you not love these?

What do you think… cute or too kitschy?

Totally DIYable, def

Just too cute - it's wedding thyme!

And if you love the idea but want to take it up a notch, you can always pair your spice wedding favors with a mini ceramic mortar and pestle, squee!

Yet another way to spice it up a little!

Whether you DIY your jam wedding favors – champagne jam seems like a good choice – or get them in bulk from a factory production line, customized labels are the in thing. Popular slogans include ‘spread the love’ and ‘jam packed with love’, but I think putting your own twist on jam labels will make your favors more memorable.

Fans for the bridesmaids can be as simple or as complex as you want them to be. Some brides choose rather plain sandalwood fans dressed up with ribbons or lace or even basic paper fans in pretty colors. Others go for something a bit more outrageous, like peacock feather fans or butterfly fans. Sound sweet? Under the cut you’ll find a taste of inspiration to help you choose the perfect fans for your bridesmaids.

Here’s a question the lovely Leah sent to me a while back:

I have been enjoying MftB for years but only now have a pressing question for you: a friend of mine is getting married soon and, at the request of family members, will be doing a registry. But it’s important to her to register with a company that has green/sustainable options for a lot of her household goods and is also “blue” (the human rights/labor rights version of being green) in its business practices–nixing most of the big-box retailers. Ideally, she’d like to register with a store that is good to the earth and to its employees, especially on women and LGBT issues. Problem is, she’s not really sure what companies those are, especially not that offer a fairly wide range of products so that she doesn’t have to register 14 places. She is not interested in doing a ludicrous super-registry list, just some household basics to start their new home–linens, towels, some basic kitchen stuff, etc. Do you have any leads on some sustainable, high-integrity businesses that do wedding registries, or perhaps another way to put together a registry altogether?

In a way, Leah, this is a toughie – finding supposedly green wedding registries isn’t the problem, since there are environmentally friendly shops that let brides and grooms (and anyone, really) create gift registries. But going blue hasn’t quite caught on yet, even if it should.

Now you said that your friend doesn’t want to have to register at multiple stores, and I can completely understand why. For one thing, creating a wedding registry at one store can be stressful enough. Now imagine having to create more than one, and then having to keep track of them all! Not fun. So what’s a conscientious bride to do? Luckily, there are gift registry web sites that allow you to pull this item and that item from different shops online to create one mega registry.

The one that immediately comes to mind is http://www.myregistry.com/ (which even lets your scan bar codes in-store with an iPhone app, zow!). It’s basically a universal wedding registry, so whatever your friend wants from any online store or brick-and-mortar store with an online component can go on the registry, no problem. If MyRegistry one doesn’t do it for her, just Google build your own wedding registry and other similar sites will appear in the results. I think, however, that MyRegistry is the one that’s been around the longest and all the reviews I’ve read have been positive.

Blue producers? Green producers? Not a problem. With a universal wedding registry, every item on the list can be as sustainable and humanity-friendly and eco-conscious as you want it to be!

It’s such a cliche, but the fact is that brides and bridesmaids need somewhere to stash their gear – and what better excuse for a new bag than that? This classy initial handbag is great because it doesn’t look like the usual bridalbridalbridal tote bag. Too serious for you? I’m also a huge fan of super cute (and huge) totes with fun and crazy patterns and graphics.

2. A break from planning:

What’s better than wedding planning? Taking a well-deserved break from it! I always advise couples to go on a few dates (at least) where wedding planning is an off-limits topic, but sometimes that’s just not enough to relieve the stress. I recommend buying every bride-to-be you know at least one fun or engrossing book, a la Stupid History: Tales of Stupidity, Strangeness, and Mythconceptions Throughout the Ages, Sh*t My Dad Says, or Northanger Abbey.

3. Easy packing:

I like luggage, but I’m not surprised when I meet people who don’t have real luggage. It’s expensive and a lot of brides- and grooms-to-be haven’t traveled much. But for the honeymoon? Come on, it pays to have nice suitcases. With locks. And wheels. If you really love the bride in your life, why not give her a set of Samsonite luggage in beautiful shiny black (at a whopping 55% off!) for her post-wedding getaway.

4. Some peace of mind on the big day:

The wedding may be months away, but wedding day survival kits make great, easy stocking stuffers for the bride-to-be, the groom-to-be, and the bridesmaids. You can always DIY it with a cute makeup bag and supplies from the drug store, but Ms. a& Mrs. makes all-inclusive bride’s survival kits, survival kits for the groom and groomsmen, and bridesmaids’ survival kits.

5. Something blue:

If you’re close to the bride, why not offer to get her that special ‘something blue’? Or, better yet, get her something blue that she doesn’t have to figure out how to integrate into the wedding day look she’s already coordinated. I sure wouldn’t have minded a holiday gift of a cute Keep Calm pendant, a blue digital camera from Samsung, or a Le Creuset stockpot!

6. A little bit of relaxation:

Yes, soap is soap, but isn’t it just a little fun, pre-wedding, to pamper yourself with shower and bath goodies with scents like wedding cake and bridal bouquet? For the bride-to-be in your life, there’s the Philosophy’s Bride gift set and for everyone else in the wedding, there’s the Bridal Party gift set.

7. Something to giggle at:

Forget the Williams-Sonoma Bride & Groom Cookbook and give the happy couple The New InterCourses: An Aphrodisiac Cookbook at $10 off the cover price. Why? First, it’s a lot more fun! And second, The Beard and I were recipe testers so we appear in the book! Really, the recipes are delish, and the book itself is pretty spicy.

8. Easy memories:

Finally, give the bride the gift of beautiful memories with a white wedding scrapbook, an easy wedding scrapbook page kit, and extra wedding scrapbook pages. Better yet, buy the books and the kits, wait for the wedding, and give the bride a belated holiday gift in the form of a scrapbook that’s already filled in!