Wedding Return Gifts

About

A return gift is not a smaller version of a wedding gift. It is bought a hundred or three hundred at a time, handed over at the door or with the thamboolam, and it is looked at next to the one the guest standing beside you received. That is the whole brief: one design, in quantity, that nobody minds receiving twice. The words vary and all of them mean this. Return gift and return favour are used interchangeably, wedding favours in English, shaadi return gift in the north, marriage return gift across the south, and the event itself is as often called the marriage function as the wedding. In Tamil and Telugu households the thamboolam bag is the vehicle rather than the gift: betel leaves, a coconut, turmeric and kumkum, with the piece tucked in alongside. Divide before you choose anything Guest count first, then the total the family is willing to spend, then divide. Most return gift decisions that go wrong go wrong at this step, because the list is still growing when the budget is set. Count households rather than invitations and round the number up, since the figure that matters is how many gifts leave the table, not how many cards went out. Then be honest about which shop you are standing in. Below about five hundred rupees a head there is nothing here for you, and the honest answer is a local sweet box, a small steel item, or one of the bulk favour sellers who work at that price. Our pieces start near a thousand rupees and the practical band here is a thousand to three thousand a head. That buys a considered gift for a list of fifty to a hundred and fifty, not a favour for a reception of eight hundred. Where the list runs that long, most families split it: something small and local for the room, and a piece from here for the fifty people they actually want to thank. One design, one finish, chosen for depth of stock Buy everybody the same thing. Guests compare across a table, a mixture reads as leftovers rather than as choice, and handing out four designs is harder o