Wedding Keepsake and Gift Ideas for the Very Best Wedding Memories
Your wedding is a special time, the memories and emotions from the day are things you want to hold onto — to cherish, as you should. For that reason wedding keepsakes have become increasingly popular, especially in recent years. We love a good wedding keepsake as much as anyone, so we are always looking to bring you unique and beautiful ideas. To get the juices flowing, we got with artist Geneva Price from Phantasia Studio who has taken her talent and turned it into a beautiful wedding keepsake in its own right — floral portraits.
Tokens versus Keepsakes
“I think that actual tokens from the wedding are some of the best keepsakes, but depending on what they are, can be hard to display or use. And of course, not all of the things you might want to remember are objects that can be preserved. I think this is where hand-crafted keepsakes really shine.
“In my floral portraits, I don’t just capture the flowers, but I can also include words and music into the composition, essentially bringing together all of the ephemeral elements that can’t be found in a token. I can also customize the colors and styles to fit seamlessly into the couple’s decor so it can be displayed and enjoyed for a long time. The added layer of craftsmanship, that one-of-a-kind-made-for-only-you aspect, makes it even more special. The best part is when I can recreate all of this long after the wedding, when all the other mementos have been lost or forgotten. Anniversary pieces are some of my favorites, including the one I recently did for a 55th!” Price explains.
Keepsake Ideas
With all that being said, Price tells us her favorite keepsakes are “things that relate directly from the actual day, as opposed to the myriad items you can have your names and wedding date engraved onto but didn’t actually play a part at the wedding.” What could be better than that? Oh, of course, Price has suggestions: “Something you will actually display or use later — what good is a keepsake if it ends up in a box in the attic? — and doesn’t scream wedding. Obviously wedding themed items are cute for newlyweds, but after a while it wears thin even if the sentiment behind it hasn’t. Toasting flutes and cake knives would fall into this category but could include any unique object like a piece of decor or something like a bell or ribbons that played a part in the ceremony. Something that preserves the words or songs is also wonderful.”
For an example of preserving words, Price shares a keepsake she gifted and another she received — “I performed a ceremony for a friend of mine and as a gift I handwrote my ‘sermon’ and their vows into a beautiful journal. That may or may not have stayed on display but I think it made a great keepsake. For my own wedding, we bought all of the proofs from the photographer and put them in a decorative box that sat on our coffee table. The ‘official’ album ended up who knows where after a few moves, but that box of photos is still fun to paw through over 20 years later.”
And then of course, there’s the floral portraits idea as a keepsake. They are truly perfect, just as Price intended — they capture the beauty of the flowers as they looked on that day, something that is hard to preserve, in a way that invites that beauty and those memories into your space on a daily basis.
What Speaks to You?
With so many unique ideas out there, nearly anything creative, customized or personalized fits the bill for wedding keepsakes. The sky’s the limit — truly. So don’t hesitate when saying you want a keepsake, it’s okay, it’s to be expected and especially in recent years. Indeed, as Price notes, the difficult times we’d recently been through may be one reason behind the increase in consideration of keepsakes. “A lot of people had to, or wanted to, put a traditional wedding celebration on hold until things opened up. With that kind of pent up anticipation and the extra emotion that puts into the actual celebration, I think it's natural to want to hang onto that feeling a little tighter. People have also been living with more vulnerability and uncertainty, so finding ways to commemorate and relive a happy time can serve as a reminder that not everything is bad.” Life is good. Love is great. And wedding keepsakes even better. With “the greater availability of customizable and personalized things, well beyond etched flutes and cake knives, [you have] greater options to create a keepsake that speaks to [you] personally.” So what will it be? What speaks to you?
Photo courtesy of Phantasia Studio
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