Creative and Quick Homemade Wedding Gift Ideas

Fill a wooden box with recipes for the couple's favorite foods.

Family and friends can make a wedding gift at home for an inexpensive personalized offering to the new couple. Make a satin-covered photo album or a wedding-year time capsule to provide the bride and groom with happy memories for years to come. Even an individual with little previous sewing experience can make a handmade quilt and proficient cooks can prepare a box full of favorite recipes.

Favorite Recipes Box

Decorate a rectangular tin or wooden box with spray paints and stencils. Use paint markers to write the word "Recipes" on the lid and write a personal message on the bottom. Print two or three templates for recipe cards from the computer onto a piece of cardstock. Cut out the cards and print a recipe onto each card. Continue printing recipe cards until the box is full. Add a jar filled with the dry ingredients for chocolate chip cookies and attach a small recipe card with an elastic band to start the new couple off in the kitchen.

Handmade Quilt

Present the bride and groom with a handmade quilt. Make the quilt from a large piece of cotton-blend fabric, cotton batting and fabric patches. Use fabric that matches the new couple's home decor and color scheme. Close friends and family can try to acquire old clothing items that the couple no longer wears and make the patches from these items. For example, close family members of the bride and groom can rummage through old boxes of clothes to find the couple's old high school shirts and souvenir T-shirts from childhood vacations. Include shirts with the bride and groom's old favorite movie stars, music groups and other teenage infatuations. Be sure not to cut up any items that are of sentimental value to the bride or groom.

Photo Album

Close friends or family of the bride and groom can create a special photo album at home filled with pictures of the couple throughout their younger years and during their courtship. This is a particularly easy project for individuals with digital images. Purchase a simple photo album from the store or make one at home from cardstock, cotton batting, satin fabric covering and photo page inserts. Print the digital pictures from the computer or search through old photographs for relevant pictures. Fill the photo album chronologically, beginning with childhood pictures and concluding with an empty page for the couple to insert a wedding picture.

Time Capsule

Make a homemade time capsule for the new couple, filled with memorable items from the year the couple met or from the year of the wedding. Use a metal container, such as a large cookie tin and write a personal message on the bottom of the tin with paint markers. For items commemorating the year of the wedding, consider a famous music CD, small movie poster, concert ticket stubs, magazines and a newspaper from the day of the wedding. For wedding-related items, fill the box with napkins from the wedding, dried flowers, wedding favors and photographs. Have other friends and family at the wedding add a note to the couple or have them make predictions about the couple's future, such as the number of children the couple will have and their future career paths. The couple can open the time capsule on a wedding anniversary and the couple's children and grandchildren can enjoy a glimpse of them and the popular people, music and events of the wedding year.

References

• The Best Homemade Gift Ideas: Weddings

Resources

• So Cool Homemade Gifts: Home
• Homemade Gift Basket Ideas: Home