I read EVERY online article and forum post I could get my grubby little hands on about giving gifts to parents as part of your wedding. I read everything I could about etiquette, budgeting and cost, traditions, unique ideas, and how to adequately mark the occasion… I REALLY wanted to get this part right! There were three important reasons that I felt strongly about properly saying “thank you” to our parents: Our families were all very generous financially in making the wedding happen, they were all very supportive and accommodating of everything we wanted to do, and to give tokens of recognition and love for having been such amazing parents to us all these years.
I’m not exactly a rigid by-the-book etiquette type, but I do have some pretty strong opinions when it comes to thanking people. As far as our situation was concerned, given the financial contribution and moral support surrounding our wedding I thought it very important to do something special as a thank you. I would say that this should be true for most people: if your parents helped with the wedding, be it money or time or assistance, you need to give them something more than a high-five. As for the marking the occasion, some consider that despite whether or not there was any help from parents (financial, emotional, or hands-on), this is a milestone in family life that you can mark by thanking your parents for all they have done for you, as you move on to start your own new family.
Bottom-line, you oughta do something. Even if its just a card saying thank you.
I knew that for our parents, it didn’t matter what it was, but I still fretted over it. Objects just didn’t seem adequate, and words alone didn’t feel like enough. So we defaulted to what has appealed to me most in my hunt for ideas – getting a really nice picture from the wedding framed and giving that as a gift after-the-fact. It commemorates the day, and is almost totally guaranteed to be something they’ll want to have.
The one drawback of this idea is you can’t give it during the wedding time - you have to wait to get your photos done, printed, and then framed. Yikes. I stressed about how to express thanks and explain “your gift will be in the mail!” in a tactful and not-too-weird kinda way. So on the weekend of the wedding we gave them cards with heartfelt messages that sort of hinted there was something special that would be on the way, and that seemed to work fine. The pictures are right now being framed, and they are going to look great! I can’t wait to send them off to our parents!
*I’m going to divert the conversation here for just a minute to address the big gay elephant in the room – sometimes relationships with parents of those of us in the LGBTQ crowd can be strained, or even estranged. Having your parents involved, supportive, or even invited is not always a given. Of course that can be the case of anyone’s wedding, but given the challenges of family acceptance, and the current political climate around the issue of same-sex marriage, there is no denying that difficulties with parents+wedding is an issue that is faced in our community in unfortunately high numbers. So I think it’s important to acknowledge here that giving gifts to your parents as a wedding tradition is NOT necessary. Just because you get married doesn’t automatically mean parents should get a present, even if they are at the wedding – and don’t let anyone try to convince you otherwise. It’s only situationally appropriate, and I do not think that it is right for everyone’s situation. I don’t think that anyone should feel obligated to give a gift to parents anymore than you should feel obligated to have escort cards or catered diner or a first dance or a wedding cake, etc. The obligatory parent gift is just one more tradition that sometimes doesn’t fit in the queer context. Sometimes our families are the ones we make ourselves, and there is a multitude of different people and relationships that can play important roles in our weddings that don’t fit the traditional model.*
What I didn’t expect was that all our parents would have really latched onto the wedding the way they did. Holy! Some days I think they all enjoyed it more than we did! We wanted to go one step further, and give them something that was really about sharing that special day with them. And because our parents were all far away from us, they weren’t very involved in the planning in the “hands on” way, so most things from the wedding they were seeing, hearing, or experiencing for the first time.
The solution: We put together scrapbooks, with pictures and all the small details from the wedding. And I mean EVERYTHING: Invitation, RSVP, Ceremony Program, all the readings, lyrics to the songs that were performed at the reception, their escort cards, menus, and then DVDs with all the pictures, video, and music. The whole shebang *DIY for Wedding Scrapbook to come in Part Two*
What did other folks get for parent-type figures involved in their weddings? Any good ideas? And does anyone have any strong feelings surrounding the etiquette on this particular tradition?
[...] projects include throwing the best New York City wedding EVER. | Posts As you might have read in Part One, I was stressing about thank-you gifts for our parents. And in addition to framed photos, we wanted [...]