Gift Opening Soapbox

In my book, Your LDS Wedding Planner, I have what I call “Soapboxes.” These are places where I give-in a bit to the less-censored Ann. I tend to be a tad opinionated and harsher. I tell my audience to feel free to ignore, disagree, and even skip over these soapboxes. Here’s an example:

Gifts:

Don’t make people come and watch you open your gifts. That is crazy. People don’t want to. They might say they do. They’re just trying to be nice. Like your baby sister wants to sit around for hours — and it will be hours — to watch you open a million gifts. Seriously, it took my husband and I two days to open all our gifts, because even we tired of it.

Your wedding gifts are really great. It’s like the biggest and best Christmas you ever imagined. For you. For everyone else it’s torture. “Oh look! More towels. Put those with the other 5 sets.” Your mom is interested. Your dad? He’d rather have bamboo shoots shoved underneath his fingernails one by one. (I’m just saying.)

Overall people will care about the things you got, but not each and every thing. The best idea is to write it all down so that when Mom asks, “What did Aunt Laurel give you?” you can sweetly and gratefully respond, “Oh Mom! She gave me the loveliest vacuum. It’s exactly what I always wanted. She’s so awesome!”

See how that’s better? Now you and your new hubby can take your time opening your gifts. You can go through them with honest opinions and think about where you want everything to go. (Like in the attic.) No really, this can be a fun time for you guys to really pay attention to each thing. Instead of pushing it aside to get through it all before your audience runs out of “give a darn.” This will also help you to easily write your thank-you cards as you think about how truly thoughtful each gift was.