5 Strange, Wacky and Unique Wedding Gift Ideas

5 strange, wacky and unique wed­ding gift ideas

We’ve all been there, you have a big wed­ding to attend, the sands of time are run­ning out, and you’re yet to find the per­fect wed­ding gift. Although it often feels like it, buy­ing wed­ding gifts is not a com­pe­ti­tion, but if it was the ideas in this post would win hands down. Often the best wed­ding gifts are those wacky, unusual, orig­i­nal and unique ideas that become the talk of the day!

Being 25 years old I am now at that age when attend­ing wed­dings feels like it has become a cen­tral part of my life, like a job or reli­gious belief. As a result I have seen and bought my fair share of wed­ding gifts. Cof­fee machines, chi­naware, chef’s knives, Playsta­tions, antique mounted stuffed stags’ heads……….wait………what?

Yes you heard me right, I recently chipped in with a group of mates to get my friend a won­der­fully pre­sented antique stuffed stag’s head, a gift that we thought spoke vol­umes of our love for our newly mar­ried friends. Sadly it turned out that the bride was a bit of an activist and ani­mal lover, so wasn’t able to share our col­lec­tive joy. My friend, the groom, how­ever loved “Stag­gers” who now takes pride of place in his pri­vate bath­room, above the toilet.

So hav­ing gained my wed­ding stripes I feel that I am more than qual­i­fied to share with you my top 5 list of strange, wacky and unusual wed­ding gifts. This list is com­piled of true life exam­ples and is intended to help you think out­side the con­fines of John Lewis’s per­fect vision of mar­ried life.

1. My Monop­oly Board

My Monop­oly is prob­a­bly up there with sliced bread and stags’ heads in terms of good ideas. I attended a wed­ding last year at which the mar­ried cou­ple were pre­sented with their very own My Monop­oly Board.

My Monop­oly is very much what it says on the tin, it allows you to com­pletely cus­tomise and per­son­alise your very own Monop­oly board. This couple’s board fea­tured the bar where they met, the des­ti­na­tion of their first hol­i­day together, the loca­tion that he pro­posed, as well as var­i­ous names of friends and fam­ily along the way.

I have since been round their flat and have played the game, it must be said it is much more fun and deeply sat­is­fy­ing to ensure you own their wed­ding day than it is to own Mayfair.

2. Per­son­alised Art

By far one of the most impres­sive gifts I ever wit­nessed was in fact the cheap­est. At my brother’s wed­ding one of his old­est friends pre­sented him and his wife with a piece of art that he had cre­ated for them, titled “Life’s Journey”.

The con­cept of the piece was sim­ple, two black lines on a red can­vas that inter­twine and cross paths from the cen­tre of the top, to the cen­tre of the bot­tom of the can­vas. How­ever this was com­pletely hand painted, and on a 6ft can­vas. The amount of time and patience that went into this amaz­ing piece of can­vas wall art was immense.

The piece cost less than £15 to make yet, after the Playsta­tion 3 I gave of course, was the best gift that my brother and his wife received. So why not har­ness your cre­ativ­ity next time? It could be the best gift you have ever given.

3. Cus­tomised Whisky

As a Scot, I do love a tip­ple of fine Scot­tish whisky from time to time. How­ever my mind was truly blown recently when the ush­ers at a wed­ding I was attend­ing showed me their gift to the cou­ple. A cus­tomised blend of whisky!

My first reac­tion was to ask the obvi­ous ques­tion, “Where did you get that made?”. The boys had found a fan­tas­tic web­site called Whisky Blender. What Whisky Blender allows you to do is cre­ate your very own blend of Scot­tish whisky using an extremely easy, and ridicu­lously fun, appli­ca­tion called the Blend­ing Lab.

You get to blend sev­eral whiskys together to cre­ate your cus­tomised whisky, name your blend and credit the cre­ator, next you choose the bot­tle for your whisky and finally pur­chase your whisky which will be deliv­ered to you. I was so blown away with the idea that I had to give it ago, and now “Petey McPete” is my weapon of choice for a quiet, relax­ing post work wind down.

4. Fly­ing Lessons

When my mate first came up with the idea of fly­ing lessons as a wed­ding gift for our friends who were get­ting mar­ried I laughed and put it down to the 4 pints of larger we had both con­sumed that fate­ful Sun­day after­noon. It wasn’t until we were both stood in front of the newly mar­ried cou­ple, with him insist­ing they open his gift now, that I realised that his idea had become a reality.

As the enve­lope was fear­fully opened, the card sur­gi­cally removed and ever so gen­tly opened, I watched as my friends’ faces adopted a series of unfor­get­table expres­sions. Fear, curios­ity, sur­prise fol­lowed by more fear and anx­i­ety. Both tried their best to smile and look grate­ful, but it was obvi­ous that this was a gift that wasn’t get­ting used any­time soon, or so I thought.

A cou­ple of months after the wed­ding I was round at my newly mar­ried friends’ house and from the moment I walked through the door, to the moment I escaped all I heard about was how good the fly­ing lessons were. Sto­ries, pho­tos, videos, they both oozed so much enthu­si­asm and excite­ment as they took me through their experience.

They enjoyed the gift so much that they actu­ally got my mate a gift to say thank you for his gift!?? This is a great exam­ple of think­ing out­side the box and get­ting some­thing out­side of the couple’s com­fort zone.

5. Per­son­alised Jewellery

Most recently I attended the wed­ding of a dear friend here in Edin­burgh. One of the guests at the wed­ding was the part­ner of one of my friends. She runs a small busi­ness cre­at­ing beau­ti­ful per­son­alised jew­ellery, tak­ing her inspi­ra­tion from Edinburgh’s city land­scapes. www.jencunningham.co.uk

She gave the bride and groom a his and hers bracelet that came in two halves, one half was the city land­scape and the other was the sky­line, when joined together they cre­ated one com­plete piece that was recog­nis­able as Edin­burgh. Per­son­alised jew­ellery is a great gift as it shows you have put thought into your gift. It doesn’t have to be expen­sive or extrav­a­gant, but if it helps retain or cre­ate a mem­ory then it will be the best gift you could ever have given.

When it comes to buy­ing wed­ding gifts I think cre­ativ­ity is the key. The more cre­ative you are with your ideas, the more likely you are to find the per­fect gift. Just like the stag’s head and the fly­ing lessons, some­times the most bizarre gifts will cre­ate a mem­ory that will last long after that cof­fee machine has died, and mem­o­ries make the best gifts.

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Pete runs one of the UK’s lead­ing can­vas prints com­pa­nies, trans­form­ing your every­day images, pho­tos and Insta­grams into mag­nif­i­cent can­vas wall art. These fan­tas­tic can­vas prints make ideal gifts. Be it a wed­ding, birth­day or anniver­sary our can­vas prints will show your loved ones that you care.