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Personalised Gifts Are The Best Gifts

Personalised Decoration for Mr and Mrs Claus!

The sun is blazing, but it’s never too early to start thinking ahead and even get a head start on your Christmas shopping. This way, you can start to pick up on what your loved ones might appreciate throughout the year – however, we all know that one person who is notoriously hard to buy for! Whether you have a significant other who can never think of what they want, or a best friend who will just buy what they like when they see it, there’s always at least one person on every Christmas list that can leave you puzzled right up until December. Our solution? Get personal…

With a personalised Christmas present, tailored specifically for your loved one! Here are some of the reasons that we think personalised gifts are some of the best presents you can give – we even have our very own Personalised section on our website, live now!

Personalised Gifts Can Be Unique

One benefit of choosing to personalise your gifts is the unique nature of such a gift – it’s unlikely that they will already have the same thing and it shows some out-of-the-box thinking on your part that your loved ones will surely appreciate! In fact, research on festive consumer habits has found a preference for personal and unique gifts, with a whopping 65% of those surveyed preferring gifts with a personal touch over more expensive, widely available presents. Choosing to have your gifts personalised yourself also means that you are in complete control over the message being given, and can give a personalised gift to a friend or family member who may have a difficult or unusual name – this is a common gripe for those with unusual names and spellings, making the effort of personalising their very own unique gift or decoration all the more special.

Sharing The Love

Of course the whole idea of gift-giving is to show our love and appreciation for those closest to us, and any gift will be viewed as a symbol of love whether it be romantic, familial or friendly. However, choosing a personalised item especially can be an opportunity to reflect on your relationship with a person to choose something that you know they will love as opposed to a more generic gift. Personalised gifts are generally well-received for exactly this reason – the recipient not only gets a physical gift, but also the warmth and appreciation of knowing that you thought deeply about them in the gift-buying process.

Capturing and Preserving Memories

Personalised gifts
A selection of our favourite decorations to personalise.

Personalised gifts aren’t just for Christmas – even our own personalised tree decorations can be a fun and personal way to celebrate important events throughout the year such as weddings, special birthdays, births and other memorable milestones. At The Olde Christmas Shoppe, we even recently helped celebrate a very special 100th Christmas in 2021! Whether it be a personalised message or perhaps a fabulous and meaningful photobook, personalised gifts are the perfect way to celebrate these milestones as they can be kept as precious mementos over the years and continue to bring happiness to your loved ones.

For more Christmas inspiration, be sure to check out some of our personalised decorations in the gallery below – now available to order from our site for the very first time!

If you liked this article, you might also like this one we wrote about some of our Prettiest Bird decorations

That’s it for now, until next time!

The Olde Christmas Shoppe
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Wedding favours

Heart and Square shaped magnets on a wooden table, with the text 'I waited 10 years for Laura & Richard to get Married and all I got was this Louse Magnet'

The tradition of distributing wedding favours is a very old one and one of the earliest accounts of wedding favours dates back to 16th century England. It was common for couples to give love knots constructed from lace and ribbon to each of their guests as a to represent their bond of love and wedding favours became a tradition that has now spread around the world.

It is not a custom that is restricted to the “lower orders” aristocrats also adopted the tradition and would send guests home with a small gift called a bonbonniere and these were also given out at birthday parties and other celebrations.

The bonbonniere was actually a small decorated box which could be made very simply of wood or jewel encrusted precious metal with everything in between and it would be filled with sugary sweetmeats or sugared almonds.

These gifts, usually consisted of five almonds or other sweets which represented fertility, health, wealth, happiness and longevity and were thought to be lucky. In handing them out the newly-weds were sharing their own happiness and good luck with their friends and family.

If you have received such a gift, nowadays often a tulle wrapped handful of sugared almonds, you will probably have found that there are still five in each favour representing the five wedding wishes.

Increasingly couples give favours according to their wedding’s theme but many countries have traditional favours such as:

Chocolate covered or sugared almonds at an Italian wedding; at a Spanish wedding, guests receive “detalles” perhaps cigars for men and a gift for the women; Russian wedding favours usually take the form of tiny pictures or small candles and trinkets; at weddings in Ireland, it is common for guests to receive small wedding bells and in India, a lucky wedding favour to give guests is a hand-made elephant ornament. 

Just for the interest it is also considered to be lucky if a bride in India has her path crossed by an elephant … lots of unemployed black cats in India!

At the Olde Christmas Shoppe we can provide a wide range of favours or party gifts for all occasions from actual personalised Christmas baubles to jigsaws featuring the photo of your choice, porcelain hanging ornaments, printed slates and many others for all ages.

And of course these can also be used as promotional materials for your business.