Our gifts of memories

This site started life as something very personal to us: the gift list for our own wedding. Today, 30 July 2015, we celebrate our 10th wedding anniversary. Ten amazing, eventful years!

In the run-up to sending out our invitations, we had to consider our options for gifts — did we want to have a standard department-store list? We’d been together for ages; what could we possibly include? New cutlery? Really?

We discovered that some travel agents let you hold a honeymoon fund with them, to help pay for the overall cost of their travel packages. But just asking for a cash donation felt a bit cold. Couldn’t we maybe do something similar — but more creative, more personal?

Couldn’t that absolutely transform the honeymoon we hoped to have?

We’ve tinkered with the design a couple of times since then, but the original gift list we made for our own wedding is still one of the sample lists on the site. It’s no exaggeration to say that it revolutionised our honeymoon from beginning to end.

On 31 July 2005, we departed for a three-week, 3000-mile roadtrip. We flew into Miami, where we stayed for a couple of days before hiring a convertable and driving up to Orlando. We spent a glorious week exploring the theme parks before making the journey from Orlando to New Orleans in a single day. From New Orleans, we headed north to Memphis, then across to Nashville and Pigeon Forge. (Dollywood rules!) Then through the mountains to Savannah, briefly back down to Orlando again, and on to Key West. A final stop back in Miami and then, exhausted but happy, home.

All thanks to our family and friends. These gifts were so meaningful to us, far more than wine glasses or pillowcases ever could have been.

The steamboat jazz cruise on the Mississippi thanks to Martin and Mary; entry to NASA thanks to Colin; renting a lodge in the smokey mountains thanks to Jim and Miranda. These things meant so much to us then, and they still mean so much to us now.

Had we opted to take the traditional path and simply kit out our kitchen, a lot of those things would probably have made their way to landfill by now. Stuff is weak, it breaks and wears out.

By contrast, these memories have grown and solidified. Our holidays now, with our kids, have a very special magic all of their own, of course — but those three weeks in 2005 will always be uniquely precious to us.

Ten years on, they’re still the best wedding present we could possibly have hoped to have.