I Do Diaries: Creating My Wedding Gift List At The Wedding Present Company

Of all the things I’ve done since getting engaged, creating our wedding gift list is the one I’d most happily do again. It is, when you think about it, a rare invitation: to walk through a room of beautiful things and imagine, one piece at a time, the home you’re about to build with someone.

I spent a morning putting mine together at The Wedding Present Company on the King’s Road, and left having enjoyed it far more than I’d expected to enjoy anything with the word “admin” hovering near it. If you’ve been wondering how to create a wedding gift list – or, like me, weren’t quite sure where to begin – here is what I chose, and what I’d tell anyone about to make theirs.

Appointments

If I could bottle one part of wedding planning and hand it to every couple, it would be my wedding gift list appointment at The Wedding Present Company showroom. Appointments are complimentary and built around the couple rather than a fixed script, which was a relief given how little I knew about any of it going in. You are assigned a Wedding List Advisor who stays with you through the process – mine met me at the door of the historic Chelsea showroom, poured me a glass of Nyetimber, and set off round the rooms as though we’d known each other for years.

Setting up an account took a few minutes, and everything runs off an iPad from there. The best part is the Scan to Add to List feature: you simply walk through the showroom, scan whatever catches your eye, and watch instantly appear on your wedding list. Before long, you’re fully immersed, glass in hand, imagining your future home together.

Tableware

Every piece is chosen with care – heritage names, contemporary designs and limited editions sitting alongside one another. I started in the glassware department, and stayed there longer than planned. The Late Afternoon Blanco tumblers caught my eye immediately – something I could see myself using daily, rather than saving for occasions. They are hand-blown, so each one differs slightly, and they have a playfulness that I like.

The Burleigh crockery in dark green stopped me next. It is a heritage design and it feels like an heirloom – the sort of thing I would pass to my own children one day, the way my mum did with my sister and me.

From there we moved to the cutlery, where I found Sabre’s Tortoise collection and fell for it on sight. It is elegant, and distinctive enough to change the character of a table.

Classic Pieces

My Advisor steered me towards the pieces couples come back for. Rebecca Udall’s scallop placemats are among the most requested, and they solve the problem of a table that looks bare without needing much else on it. Issy Granger’s butter dishes are similarly popular, and I added one on the grounds that I have wanted a proper butter dish for about five years and never bought myself one.

Trudon is a recent addition to their offering, and the giant candles are the reason to know about it. Anyone who knows me knows I cannot have too many candles at home. They make a dinner party feel warmer before anyone has sat down, and I could picture these burning along the middle of the table.

I also had my eye on Pooky’s rechargeable lamps which I was first introduced to by a friend this summer. She used them to decorate the table at an outdoor dinner she hosted, and they added such a beautiful glow to the evening. I love the fact they can be styled differently with interchangeable lampshades to suit the occasion.

Exclusives

A good part of the room is given over to brands you can only register for through The Wedding Present Company. They cover the things couples rarely think to put on a list – art, lighting, the pieces most people assume they will get round to buying themselves.

Lara Robinson’s paintings are one of them. I kept coming back to the idea of hanging one in my hallway, where I would see it every day.

Alice Palmer & Co is another, and the lampshades are the standout – interchangeable, so they can be swapped to suit the table or the season.

Going Bespoke

The part I hadn’t expected was the flexibility of the offering. If there is something you want that sits outside the existing collection, your advisor can add it – a piece from a brand they don’t usually carry, or something you have had your eye on for years.

You can also set up funds rather than objects. Couples put together honeymoon funds and wine funds, and guests contribute what they like towards them – I recently went to a wedding where the couple pooled contributions towards a single piece of art.

And the charity idea I had at the start doesn’t have to be dropped: you can raise money for causes you care about through the same list, alongside everything else.

Price-Point

When I came to build my own list, the spread of prices mattered as much as the pieces themselves. Guests should be able to give something they feel good about at whatever they want to spend, and the range starts at around £20 – Wren and Wilder’s two-piece salad servers are a good example, and the sort of thing that once in your cupboard, gets used every week.

A good list also does the job a registry is supposed to do: nobody ends up with three of the same vase, nothing arrives that goes straight into a cupboard never to be seen again, and everything that does arrive is something you chose yourself. For couples building a home from scratch, or upgrading pieces they have had since university, that is the whole point.

Remote Appointments

Not everyone can make it to the showroom, and appointments run over Zoom as well, with the same advisor talking you through the collections from your kitchen table.

Visiting the store opened my eyes to how much couples can actually do with a registry. The service is personal, the process is simple, and I would recommend it to anyone at the start of planning – particularly anyone who finds the idea of a gift list daunting, as I did.