Gollnick
Musical Director
- Joined
- Mar 22, 1999
- Messages
- 29,258
I think our friend Christian has the solution here, guys.
Wedding gifts are a bit different than most gift-giving situations in that the couple essentially tells you what to give them by registering. If you have a different idea, ask. Just call the bride-to-be and say, "I'm so glad that you invited us to your wedding.... small talk, small talk, small talk... Say, I was thinking about getting you two a gift you two can both use on your camping trips, perhaps a nice fixed-blade knife... " If the bride-to-be says, "Oh, that would be very nice," then what has your bride to argue with? Essentially, the camp knive is now on the registry list.
Now, on the other hand, I suspect that maybe the real problem your wife has is that she doesn't think that a camping knife will reflect well on her. She'd prefer to be seen giving the china. In this case, you may not be able to easily overcome her objections.
BTW, one of my prefered gifts is a nice carving set. A carving set isn't called a _set_ for no reason. It is a set unto itself. It's perfectly acceptable for the carving set to be separate from the rest of the silverware. One reason for this is that a carving set is quite large compared to silverware and a pattern that looks very nice on a dinner fork might not look as good scaled up 3-4x for a carving fork. The significantly larger carving fork venue also welcomes patterns that couldn't be executed on a dinner fork. Finally, in this modern day, the materials and finishes for the silverware is often selected with the dishwasher in mind. But, hand-washing and polishing the two or three pieces of a carving set isn't overly burdensome, so exotic wood, bone, or stag handles and mirror finishes, for example, become permissible. The point here being that you can buy a carving set without worrying about matching the couple's other patterns.
Chuck
Wedding gifts are a bit different than most gift-giving situations in that the couple essentially tells you what to give them by registering. If you have a different idea, ask. Just call the bride-to-be and say, "I'm so glad that you invited us to your wedding.... small talk, small talk, small talk... Say, I was thinking about getting you two a gift you two can both use on your camping trips, perhaps a nice fixed-blade knife... " If the bride-to-be says, "Oh, that would be very nice," then what has your bride to argue with? Essentially, the camp knive is now on the registry list.
Now, on the other hand, I suspect that maybe the real problem your wife has is that she doesn't think that a camping knife will reflect well on her. She'd prefer to be seen giving the china. In this case, you may not be able to easily overcome her objections.
BTW, one of my prefered gifts is a nice carving set. A carving set isn't called a _set_ for no reason. It is a set unto itself. It's perfectly acceptable for the carving set to be separate from the rest of the silverware. One reason for this is that a carving set is quite large compared to silverware and a pattern that looks very nice on a dinner fork might not look as good scaled up 3-4x for a carving fork. The significantly larger carving fork venue also welcomes patterns that couldn't be executed on a dinner fork. Finally, in this modern day, the materials and finishes for the silverware is often selected with the dishwasher in mind. But, hand-washing and polishing the two or three pieces of a carving set isn't overly burdensome, so exotic wood, bone, or stag handles and mirror finishes, for example, become permissible. The point here being that you can buy a carving set without worrying about matching the couple's other patterns.
Chuck
