Today I found myself having yet another conversation about requesting monetary gifts for special occasions.  Okay so that’s not so surprising when you consider that 1bigpresent is my business and that the aim of the business is to help remove the stigma of asking for cash as well as making it easier to get one special gift that you really want, but it really is so interesting to hear other people’s varied opinions on this subject. 

We talked today about how there will always be some folk who would never dream of using a gift list or asking for a gift of ANY description, never mind a monetary gift, and really do see it as an imposition! That aside however, studies show that 42% of wedding couples would prefer to receive cash gifts but just don’t know how to actually ask their guests, and so we deliberated at length about this.  My lunch companion pointed out that, understandably, people worry about ‘How to ask politely’ and are never sure how to word their invitations without causing offence.  (You can check out some ‘polite words’ by reading our other blogs!!) Often people compromise on what they actually want because they are just too embarrassed to ask for cash, or they feel pressurised by parents or other family members who say ‘Oh no you musn’t do that!’  On the other side of the coin your guests will perhaps be wondering how much cash to give, as it’s quite easy to disguise the cost of a wedding gift that you have chosen yourself, especially if you manage to find a bargain in the sale…. but you can’t possibly disguise the amount of cash in an envelope!  And what happens to that envelope?  Trust me, there is something very disconcerting about placing your envelope on a table in the hotel lobby…. and leaving it!!   The last time I did this I am ashamed to say that I made many extra trips to the ladies, just to check that it was still there and in exactly the same position as I’d left it etc etc. 

Unfortunately it is a well known fact that things do go missing at wedding venues and when you look at it rationally you’ll appreciate why:  A table in a public place, bearing a random selection of beautifully wrapped gifts, and scattered all around are those telling white envelopes, such easy pickings for any opportune thief, as throughout the festivities is there anyone (apart from me!) who would notice if a couple of the envelopes were to vanish?   One is almost tempted to thrust said envelope into the arms of the unsuspecting bride, the groom, or indeed anyone who may hold it tightly ALL DAY and  NOT- LET- IT- GO!!

So does this present a clear cut argument in favour of Gift Services such as 1BigPresent.  I think it does!!  Research your Gift Service carefully, choose your words carefully, and then hand it over to your lovely guests to do the rest.  When they look at the options they will be glad to have helped you save towards something that you really want…. securely and stress free….without shopping….or parking….or wrapping…. and in just a matter of minutes!! 

One of the most complex and time-consuming elements of wedding planning is undoubtedly trying to work out how to seat your guests to make sure they have a great time throughout the wedding breakfast and beyond. While this task may seem simple at first, the bride and groom-to-be can soon find themselves swamped in Post-it notes, floundering amidst a sea of political correctness, familial feuding and confusion about where best to place your guests for the perfect day. Modern families tend to be a mixture of divorced, arguing, or feuding factions, and with the best will in the world it can be difficult to know how best to sit your party to make sure there are no arguments and everyone feels comfortable.

Table planning, then, becomes ever more important. The modern bride and groom have to establish how to keep their guests happy, while maintaining a positive atmosphere, not offending anyone, and abiding by the tradition that is expected of them. This is no easy task, in a culture where relationships are forged and broken every day.

The tradition of the top table

The tradition of the top table is thought to stem from the courts of France. People were placed in order of importance, observing the hierarchy of the court which allocated seating depending upon wealth or familial seniority. This tradition has held through the years, resulting in the positioning we recognise today.

To observe modern etiquette fully, the top table should resemble something along these lines:

·Chief bridesmaid, Groom’s father, bride’s mother, groom, bride, bride’s father, groom’s mother, best man.

If the bride’s parents are divorced, the table should be laid out as follows:

·Bride’s stepfather, chief bridesmaid, groom’s father, bride’s mother, groom, bride, bride’s father, groom’s mother, best man, bride’s stepmother.

And for a groom’s divorced and re-married parents, try this:

·Best man, groom’s stepmother, groom’s father, bride’s mother, groom, bride, bride’s father, groom’s mother, groom’s stepfather, chief bridesmaid.

Bucking the trend

Despite the expectation to seat people traditionally, there is an argument for dispensing with etiquette altogether. After all, the bride and groom are the most important people on the big day, and remembering this can only help the seating arrangements. As long as they are together, happy, and surrounded with people who care about them, perhaps it is time to move with the times and select a seating plan that offers the best chance of happiness for the two people whose wedding has led to this day taking place.

And finally when all else fails…..take the easy online option with TopTablePlanner.com, some nifty software to help ease the pain!!

Our guest blogger is the fabulous Jennifer Syrkiewicz

Jennifer writes as Stilus Word

Purchase her latest paperback, Gardening in the Dark from Amazon.

The Weather: Well I tend to pay a fair bit of attention to the weather each weekend as here at OneBigPresent HQ we have gift lists registered for more weddings than for any other occasion. Significantly this particular Saturday was a very busy one for us and so I was praying for sunshine a little bit more than usual, not only for our OneBigPresent couples but obviously for Jane and Mark, who had flown in from Australia earlier in the week. As it happens it was gloriously SUNNY and the start of our perfect day! Wow!

Now a little about the bride and groom: Jane is Australian and Mark is from Elgin in the Scottish Highlands, though he has lived in Australia for many years now! They met when Jane, who is an interior designer, started working with Mark, an architect! According to Mark the attraction was instant but as he was Jane’s boss it was a tricky one. Some months and one change of employer later Jane was expecting their gorgeous baby girl Scarlett who at ten months old took pride of place at Mum and Dad’s wedding on Saturday! 

So why Comlongon Castle? Well Mark and Jane wanted to find a traditional venue in Scotland and dreamed of a castle so spent some time at home in Australia googling said Scottish venues and castles! They stumbled upon Comlongon Castle near Gretna in Scotland which is a restored Medieval Scottish Castle as well as the ultimate wedding venue and which actually dates back to 1451. Several superb Trip Advisor reviews later and despite being an extremely busy wedding venue (400 weddings a year) they were able to offer Mark and Jane a cancellation on Saturday 21st August and so it was an absolute must and from then on full steam ahead with the planning! As a guest at this beautiful wedding I can honestly say that everything was perfect. The wedding guests were a lively blend of Scots and Australians who united at the Castle entrance before being piped to the ceremony in The Great Hall by the Scottish Piper. This is quite an intimate venue so was perfect for our party of 50 guests, but as The Great Hall is accessed by a very steep yet very narrow stone staircase it’s possibly not ideal for the elderly or infirm. I know that our bride did find it slightly tricky to negotiate in her stunning dress which had been specially designed and made for her back in Australia. She looked just gorgeous as she entered on the arm of one very proud dad and by the look on Mark’s face he knew he was a lucky man. Baby Scarlett was a picture in silk and as good as gold as her mummy and daddy said their vows. Even in August the fire in The Great Hall was glowing and with candles and candelabra’s everywhere this just added to the amazing atmosphere, though admittedly we were a wee bit hot due to the lovely August weather. The ceremony was simple but perfect, with a good helping of emotion, and then it was back down and onto the lawns for champagne. The Castle also prepare their own special champagne punch which is just delicious and such a refreshing change from regular champagne. We loved the punch but unfortunately so did the wasps who were our uninvited guests all day! Thankfully no stings that I know of though!! Lots of stunning photos were taken in the Castle grounds and there was plenty of time for the little ones to run around before we made our way to The Banquet Hall.

I loved the fact that each guest selected from a leather bound menu on arrival and so as a Scot now residing in Yorkshire I was hugely excited by my first course of Haggis, Neeps and Tatties! It certainly did not disappoint, but had serious competition in the form of the exquisite Scottish Beef main course and decadent Tipsy Laird dessert which is a delicious alcohol soaked trifle. The Banquet Hall was truly stunning and the floral displays from Blooms of Dumfries were some of the most exquisite I have seen. This is where the dedicated Wedding Co-ordinators at the Castle come into their own as they use only the best local wedding suppliers. Some more emotion in the form of some wonderful Scottish and Australian speeches and then back to the terrace for coffee and chocolate brownies as the room was prepared for our evening’s entertainment.

Now at this stage a special mention must go to the scrummy chocolate brownies which were actually made by our bride just before the wedding! I appreciate that getting married can be pretty stressful so I figure that coming all the way from Australia to get married must be doubly stressful, never mind with a 10 month old baby and all of your wedding outfits etc, but to make trays and trays of ‘THE MOST DELICIOUS’ chocolate brownies on the day before your wedding had me in complete and utter awe!!

Our evening continued with a lively ceilidh by the Castle’s resident band which had the Austalian contingents swinging their kilts with their new Scottish family till the wee small hours and competing badly, (sorry guys), in a traditional Scottish Sword Dance. Our fabulous day ended as Scots and Australians joined hands and hearts for that old Scottish favourite Auld Land Syne! Mark and Jane, congratulations, this truly was THE perfect wedding!

Twitter, as many of us in the wedding industly are discovering, can be the most wonderful networking tool! It is also however extremely time consuming and can provide a massive distraction from other jobs, as you find yourself so easily sidetracked into checking out all sorts of entertaining posts and blogs, or even just by chatting to twitter friends or indeed to twitter strangers!!!  I have loved tweeting to all and sundry and checking out the latest gossip, which quite often hits twitter before many other forms of media, however last week I came face to face with some fellow tweeps at the recent Wedding Affair networking event!  That was actually rather strange, and an excellent example of how easy it is to become ’someone else’ on social networking sites.  Perhaps at their most confident and outgoing on twitter some of my ‘friends’ were not at all as I imagined them to be, and even I, who can happily spout some amount of twitter drivel, felt somewhat ‘naked’ without my twitter persona.

That aside, without welcoming twitter into our lives we would most likely not even have known that one another existed, and so I feel that we must embrace this magnificent networking tool….until the next one comes along to intrigue us!! 

Now I’m off to improve my ranking in this exciting top 100! The pressure is well and truly on!!

1.  Decide what type of service you require!  Would you prefer your cash gifts to be untied ie free to be used as you wish once the big day has passed?  If so then a cash/gift voucher based service such as 1BigPresent.com provides an ideal solution as it offers a secure and effective way of collecting your gifts and of course it eliminates security worries on the actual day!!

2. Do your homework!  Remember - your chosen Gift List Service is acting as a temporary bank account for you and for your wedding guests so ensure that you have confidence in them.  Act upon recommendations, but always look for a valid UK address and/or telephone number!  Email/phone them first with any queries or to discuss any concerns you may have.

3.  Study your chosen website carefully. Read the FAQ’s and understand the charges.  Where possible select a service which applies a maximum charge or even a fixed cost; at this stage you can’t possibly know how much your Gift Fund will achieve and so an uncapped percentage fee could quickly rocket to more than you thought.

4.  Think about ALL of your guests!  An online giving service suits most wedding guests these days but there will always be one or two who can’t or won’t use an online service.  At 1BigPresent.com we often see couples who have set up an online giving service with us but who also have opened a traditional department store list just to offer a little flexibilty for their wedding guests.

5.  Use the website to full advantage!  Upload photographs and as much information as the website will allow! Tell your guests about the gift that they are helping you to achieve whether it be boringly functional, or unique and quirky.  There is nothing worse than an empty page with nothing of interest to capture your guest’s attention so use the space given to you to full advantage.  And finally at 1BigPresent.com we advise our customers wherever possible to leave their account open for a short time after their big day.  For whatever reason, and it does still surprise us, there always seem to be one or two guests who add to the gift account AFTER attending the celebrations!!

I would be fibbing if I was to say that there are not many headaches with running a site such as 1bigpresent; the biggest to date has been finding it’s niche, somewhere for it to fit when marketing!  It isn’t a site selling gifts or presents, it is actually a service which does a beautiful job of linking everyone together, no matter where they are in the world, towards a fabulous birthday or wedding gift or just the cash to buy what you need.  But headache aside I love it’s diversity!  We are currently holding gift accounts for a massive civil ceremony in Ireland, a marriage across two cultures (Hong Kong and UK), and a couple getting married in Italy, having a reception in the UK and then leaving for their new life in Oz.  Most wedding/civil couples use their gift fund for a honeymoon (or to pay their credit card bill after the honeymoon!) but we have seen some original and interesting gift ideas going on, namely a renovation holiday home project to which all guests are invited when it’s complete, a unique piece of Scottish artwork, oh and my absolute favourite, the Sonos music system which allows you to play unlimited music around your home.  This was a request from one of last year’s birthday people on 1bigpresent.com and after reading her fabulous account of the product I have to say I succumbed and am now the delighted owner of a Sonos S5 Zone Player and the impossible to put down hand held controller, which to my shame I must admit I am incredibly possessive of.  And so I guess one of the loveliest things about running 1bigpresent is sharing in a little bit of each celebration and knowing how much the service helps each wedding couple or birthday person to achieve what they want in a gift.  Does that cure my 1bigpresent headache?  Hmmm nope, I still need 1bigparacetamol for that!!

Read on for some more polite ways of asking for what you really want.

2.  You’re saving for new breasts, buttocks, eyes, teeth, identity, etc etc

3.  You want to get the hell out of here (there or anywhere) but don’t even have the bus fare:(

4.  You saw what they bought for cousin Geoffrey - EEEEK - but you pretended to like it - DUUUHH - so looks like another’s on it’s way

5. You want to rekindle what you started with that juicy Turkish waiter but you’ve already sent him ALL your wages for his large extended family 

6.  You want to give all the money in your gift fund to charity (yes I AM serious!)

7.  You just don’t need ANYTHING (GRRRR) - but some Jimmy Choo’s would be cool

8.  Your car is somewhere on the hard shoulder of the M1 (but don’t worry - the exhaust is in your handbag)

9.  Your Auntie Jean has a knitting machine (poem in there somewhere lol)

10. You’re just purely and utterly, totally and absolutely SSSSSSSSKKKKKKIIIIIINNNNNNTTTTTTTT!!!  Innit!