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wife gift

How NOT to buy a gift for your sweetheart

By Guest List
wife gift

Your future wife is your sweetheart for life. Keep that in mind as you read this blogpost that explores the challenge of the perfect wife gift.

Men, you are entering an area of opportunity … and landmines! Beware, a false move can get you in the dog house faster than you can say “vacuum cleaner!” By the same token, the right move can create beauty, joy, and passion to nurture your marriage for a lifetime.

Wife gift landmines

We talked to a man who can help you. This gentlemen has been married many years and has enjoyed a beautiful, happy marriage. His wife is his best friend. He is his wife’s best friend. In other words, he can do nothing wrong, right?

Wrong!

Let’s call him Joe. Joe has found himself in the doghouse on more than one occasion thanks to poorly conceived gift ideas. He reveals some of the wife gift mistakes he has made.

The automatic pilot gift mistake

While courting his wife, Joe would frequently buy his sweetheart flowers. Beautiful! She loved them. So when he got married, Joe thought,

“Why mess with a good formula!”

So he gave his wife flowers on her birthday; on their first wedding anniversary; on Valentine’s Day. And the next year, he repeated the same formula … until his wife rebelled. She knew he was putting no thought into the gift any more. Flowers were great when purchased with feeling. They weren’t great when it appeared he was buying them to make his life easy and get it over with.

The functional gift mistake

Then there was the year he gave his wife a functional item, a foldable kitchen stool for Christmas. Ouch! Practical doesn’t work with most women. It didn’t matter that he also gave her a bottle of her favorite cologne. The practical gift expunged the benefit of the romantic gift. To compound his gift-giving gaffe, he gave her cologne every year for Christmas, a classic “automatic pilot gift mistake.” (See above.) Two wife gift mistakes in one single holiday!

The super extravagant gift mistake

As problematic as the mistakes above are, it can actually get worse. Some men swing to the other extreme and buy super extravagant gifts. And then they try to outdo themselves year after year. You can see the risk potential here, like running out of money!

Seriously, it’s not the size of the gift, it is the thought behind it that counts. Sometimes guys buy big, expensive gifts, or even small expensive gifts, like jewelry, in an attempt to make themselves look good. Keep in mind, there is nothing wrong with jewelry, and there is much right with it.

Examine your motivations first.

Are you buying an expensive diamond necklace because your wife really wants it, or do you just want to show off?

Here’s the bottom line: listen.

Listen to hints your wife drops in your day to day living. If she sees something in a catalog or online that she comments on, don’t just make a mental note, make a list and write it down. That way, when you present her a gift she really, really wants, she’ll know that you listened.

Queen City DJs specializes in launching couples on their way with fabulous wedding entertainment. Are you engaged? Be sure to check out our planning tools. Great wedding entertainment is a tremendous gift to yourselves and your guests!

wedding guest list

Why you want a large guest list for your wedding celebration

By Guest List
wedding guest list

A couple of professors at Emory University conducted a study on weddings and marriage. One of their findings was pretty amazing. The more people you invite to your wedding, the more likely your marriage will be successful.

A couple that invites ten people to their wedding is 35% less likely to ever get divorced than a couple who exchange vows without any guests.

Your wedding guest list should be big, no, make that huge! Your marriage may depend upon it! Let me explain.

Even more dramatically, couples that invite more than 200 guests are 92% less likely to get divorced than couples with no guests.

A large wedding guest list is a good idea

As you review the graph above, you can see that at every level, the more guests you invite, the less likely you’ll ever get divorced. One of the researchers, Randy Olson, explained why:

“Clearly, this shows us that having a large group of family and friends who support the marriage is critically important to long-term marital stability.”

In other words, when you have a large group of family and friends, they have a vested interest in your well-being. They help provide the emotional “safety net” to nurture and sustain your fledgling family over the years.

Remember these wise African proverbs

To quote an African proverb,

“it takes a village.”

To quote another African proverb,

“If you want to go fast, go alone; but if you want to go far, go together.”

Community matters to your marriage as you travel on your new journey together.

Last week’s blogpost dispensed wedding guest list advice. We focused on practical ways to cut your list down to size to accommodate your wedding budget. However, in light of this research, perhaps conventional thinking is backward. Perhaps the proper way to plan your wedding is that your wedding budget needs to accommodate your guest list, not the other way around.

It’s more important to get your community out in full force for your life-changing wedding celebration, even if you need to cut back a little on the menu or the flowers.  The love and prayers your “community” brings to your marriage is more important than a sit-down dinner verses a buffet.

Queen City DJs offers a full palate of wedding entertainment options that are easily customizable to fit your budget.  You never have to scrimp on the fun with Queen City DJs!

So invite away!