Gifts that people actually want - Wedding, Part Two

When you start considering ethical issues, gift-giving becomes an issue. Does this person want or need this thing? Will they use it? How wasteful is it if they don't? You have to think a lot about the individual and make sure you aren't wasting resources on a gift that will be thrown out or sit unused in their home.

So trying to think of a gift to give to 50 people that would not be wasteful was quite difficult.

One obvious choice is edible things. We ended up getting rainbow heart lollipops from Designer Candy. They were good value and a good company to communicate with, and they sent us flavour samples to try first. The lollipops also looked cool on the tables. Ethically, I'd call it a mixed success. Of course each one is wrapped in plastic, so not so great, and then I suppose that although it is edible, perhaps not all of our guests actually want to slowly work through a large lollipop. Since it doesn't have our names on it though, I hope that anyone who doesn't want it will gift it on to someone who will.

The lollipops were also useful to tie name tags to. I drew the tags myself, which was fun, although I knew as soon as I drew the pigs and whales that I was running a big risk! No one was too offended.

Then, as we looked at numerous gardens to be our wedding venue, we came up with our other gift idea - pot plants. What we loved about this idea was that we could buy some pretty plants, use them as table decorations for the night, and then people could take one home. This, in my opinion, was a complete success. There were no decorations of any kind wasted that night, nothing left to throw out. Not everyone wanted a plant, but there were plenty of people to pick up the slack. Those left towards the end of the night had a great time picking and choosing from the leftovers to add to their collection. We ended up with about six plants to take home, including a fern from the gardens where we got married. Let's hope I don't kill it.

Then Rhiannon gave me another plant when she came to visit this week - 'Blushing Bride'. Nice.