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WEDDING GOSSIP 11 Girl In A White Dress 8606 views

Shopping frenzy

Our resident bride-to-be, Cheryl, shares the highs and lows of wedding planning in the run-up to her big day. This week she negotiates the aisles to fill up her gift list...

I never realised how much I needed Nigella Lawson’s pretty measuring cups in cream (set of 4) until now. Or a four-hole egg poacher pan thing (although I rather like poached eggs so this could come in handy). It’s only when my beloved and I started compiling our wedding gift list that I realised how empty my life had been without both these kitchen gadgets. OK, not empty exactly but certainly poached eggs had been tricky.

I wasn’t sure if we were even going to have a gift list at first – it seemed a teensy bit presumptuous to me, like demanding your friends buy you nice presents or they can’t come to your party. But then a married friend said, ‘But what will you serve posh dinner party food on?’ Erm, the same IKEA plates I’ve been using for the past five years? She stared at me, open-mouthed. Clearly, I had missed the point.

‘No,’ she said, in a withering oh-lordy way, ‘this is your chance to get a load of good quality stuff that’ll last for years and impress people who come round for dinner.’

Right. ‘Plus,’ she went on, ‘people will want to buy you presents anyway and if you don’t tell them what you want, you’ll end up with 20 coffee makers and spend the first weekend after the wedding exchanging it all.’

So we thought about it for a bit and talked about it for a lot and decided we’d set up a list at a reputable high-street department store because they seemed to have a lot of the nice stuff she’d been talking about.
And then came the wonderful actual shopping part…

On average, wedding guests spend about £72.50 on gifts for the happy couple, so assuming that only half your guests buy you presents, you should be able to work out a fairly realistic total from which to start. And of course you can keep adding as they start buying.

Armed with this knowledge and a clicky scanner thing, we spent the bank holiday wandering around the store, selecting shiny kitchen appliances, fluffy bathroom towels and luxury 100% fine Egyptian cotton percale bed linen - whatever percale is - and a whole heap of lovely posh stuff that'll hopefully last as long as our marriage. I’ve never had so much fun in a department store - although as we left I couldn't help feeling as though I was missing something. Then I realised it was the shopping bags - virtual gift list shopping means no carrier bags to struggle home on the bus.

I think I could get used to this...

Next week: Cheryl sings the praises of bridesmaids everywhere...

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