Personalized gift idea

You can provide many reasons, if “why do you give a gift” question is asked, but each one of us will at least agree when I say, we gift because we care for the recipient, or at least we want to convey that we care for them. The super gift I am suggesting here will do exactly that. It will tell your beloved how much you care for her, and to what length you can go for her. I am asking you to make her birthday special for her by personalizing her environs. Make her feel special and pampered today.

Personalizing her surroundings

You will not need many tools to create this super gift. All you will need is lots of time and love for your wife. The idea is to make your presence felt on her birthday despite the fact that you are 500 miles away from her fulfilling your official duty. Word of caution: Do not let your plan leak out. If she gets to know about your intention, the fun of giving this gift will be gone. Surprise is the main ingredient. You have to perform as an undercover gifting agent. Take sufficient time in your hand to make her birthday special. You can give this gift even if you are with her, in the city.

Start with morning, and make a list of things she typically does after waking up. See what all you can modify. If she wakes up and goes directly to the bathroom to wash her face, a surprise should be waiting for her near the bathroom’s wash basin. A message like, “Good morning honey, you look beautiful today. Happy birthday! A tight hug!” could be placed there. If her second step is to fetch water from refrigerator, a rose with your message should be waiting there to greet her good morning. If this step is followed by going to kitchen for tea, a card, or just a message saying how much you miss her tea today should be placed beneath the tea container.

Make a list of the work she does in the afternoon, evening and night; at office, at home and see what all you can customize. Do not rush to wish her happy birthday yet, let the gift culminate up to a very warm happy birthday in the night. You should not forget to customize her cell phone ring tone, alarm clock, landline’s ringtone, and also leave a warm message in the answering machine preprogrammed to play when she leaves for work. The car she drives should have an I love you card waiting on the driving seat, and her music player should also play your message followed by her favorite music (or the music that has a romantic value for both of you) once she turns the ignition on.

Send flowers to her office and a big cake to your home in the evening. Ask her friends to send her your love, when she reaches office. You can also ask her cell phone company to call her and greet her, and to play her favorite tune after calling her. Arrange for sweet, lovely message as well. You can buy a short messaging pack and ask the seller to send her some beautiful messages at sporadic intervals. This custom gift will keep her happy and entertained throughout the day. She will feel, you are right there, beside her, all day, despite your being out of town on business.

Her day should culminate on your calling her, just after she enters home and sees the cake. Call her and just say, “Happy Birthday”. It will do the magic, her eyes will become moist, her voice will quiver, and her heart will be over joyous.

You can also think of installing 2-3 cameras one each in the bedroom, kitchen and living room to record her expressions and reactions. Preprogram the camera based on her daily routine, and watch the recoding with her once you are back. On the cost of repeating I must say: surprise is the key element of this personalized super gift. If the plan is leaked, the super gift will not have the desired effect.

The lovey-dovey wedding idea

The super gift idea that I am sharing here will make the marriage of your son/daughter/friend not only personal but very, very memorable. I am asking you to personalize his or her wedding by distributing bride’s as well as groom’s favorite candies and cookies among the guests attending the marriage, along with a note stating the sweet, little story behind the candies and cookies distribution. If you want, you can also get one childhood photo of the bride as well as of the groom printed on the cover-side of the note.

This activity will not only involve everyone present at the party, but it will also make the marriage a memorable super event. How many marriages do you know of that uses such innovative technique to personalize the wedding? The point is: do this and the bride and the groom will be taken over by the true joyful emotion at the sight of their guests indulging in the secret fantasy of bride and groom’s childhood.

The wedding planner

Creating this custom gift is fairly simple, and can be done with a very little effort. You should be extremely cautious while collecting information about the candies and cookies he or she as well as his or her would-be better half liked when they were kids as you would not like to disclose your plans beforehand.

Once you got the information you were seeking, the next step is to procure the cookies and candies in sufficient quantity. To get the idea about how many cookies and candies you are going to need, you have to find the following:

• The number of guests who will be present at the wedding.
• How many candies and cookies will you be giving to each guest?

After getting the numbers right, it is time to write the story behind the candies and cookies distribution. You should use calligraphy or handwriting font to write the story. Write the story using a flowery language, and keep the story short. The size of the note should not be more than 5 X 4 inches. You can also use decorative borders, if you wish to adorn the note.

You will need a page designing and lay out making software like Quark Express, or Adobe Indesign to design the note. You can also use Adobe Photoshop, Adobe illustrator, or Corel Draw for this purpose.

On the cover-side of the note, put one picture each of the bride and the groom clicked when they were kids or may be toddler. If you want to add a headline or a caption to the image, feel free to do that. You will need   Adobe Photoshop or Gimp (open source) to optimize the images for the note.

The wedding gift

How are you planning to distribute it? C’mon, don’t tell me that you just planning to hand the candies, cookies and note over to your guests! Kidding, right? Jokes apart, packaging and the delivery of the super gift is as important as the gift itself.

For packaging, you can use a small box made of pristine white or elegant black leather. On top-face of the box, get the name of the bride and the groom engraved along with the salutation for the receiver. Use thin, golden or silver font for the purpose. Put the candies and cookies in the box, keep the note on top of them, and hand the box over to every guest before the ritual starts.

Finding a box manufacturer will not be very difficult. Search the Internet for the companies that specialize in gift wrapping, or you can also contact companies that make small boxes for watches. Ask for their quotes, and go with the one who offers the most competitive price.

Do the Unexpected

Childhood is the best part of any man’s life. We realize this when we are way out of our childhoods. No gift can be better for an elderly couple than giving him and her opportunity to relive their childhood. The super event I am asking you to plan will present your parents with this kind of opportunity. I am asking you to call all the childhood friends of your mother and father, and arrange a party for them.

Making your parents relive their childhood is the central idea behind the super gift we are going to discuss here.

Preparation for the big night

This will be a surprise party, and by that I mean, your parents should not be aware of the people on the guest list. You can safely tell them about the party you are arranging for them. There are two benefits of this action: one, your parents will not make any other plan, and two, your parents will get ready for the big occasion.

Party planning

Start with making a guest list. This guest list is going to be unlike any other guest list that you ever had for any other party. Only those people who have a relation with your parents’ childhood should be included in this guest list. The idea is to invite as many childhood friends of your parents as you can, and make them relive their childhood. They will always be thankful for this sweet gift, and will always remember this night. The possibility is high that they even rejoin ties with many of the invitees with whom your parents’ ties got snapped due to various reasons.

To prepare one such list, you will need to take leads from your parents. Ask them, and even ask their siblings, their neighbors, or you may sneak through their address book to get information about their friends. Once you have the contact list, start dialing each number, and ask them to join this party. Make clear who all are inviting, and how this could be a memorable event for every participant. Do not forget to request each of them not to tell your parents about your plan.

Walk that extra mile, but make sure, your parents’ friend agrees to attend to the party. Arrange for their commutation, if you can. Seeing their age, you should make all the preparation to make their journey less exerting, and tell them how far you are planning to go to bring them to the super event.

The next step is to create the ambience. The first step in that direction is to talk to your parents’ close friends, and ask them about the kind of environments they used to create in their parties, also ask for your parents’ favorite activities; kind of games, or fun activities they were doing as kids. Mimic them. You can also ask your parents about these things indirectly without disclosing your intention.

Once the plan for the ambience is in place, it’s time to think about food. You should remember that given the age, the guests might have some health-related issues, prepare food accordingly. Ask your parents or their friends about their favorite candies, cookies, or biscuits; include them in the menu as well. The cake should be the one they drooled over when they were kids. If they liked two different cakes then get two different cakes for the occasion. Music should also be from the same era. The party, in its entirety, should be a time machine that will take all the guests back in time to their childhoods.

Time to execute

Once every planning is done, starting making arrangements, stealthily. Get video recorders installed at various places to record this memorable party as well. I am asking you to install video recorders and not to use it because I want to suggest that no one other than their childhood friends should be present in the party, not even you. You should also leave the room once the cake is cut, and your share of cake is given to you. Get out of the venue and let them enjoy!

Pack up time

Once the party is over, collect the video footages from the recorders. Make a good disc from the footage with a good jacket, and dispatch it to everyone on the guest list with a thank you for participate note. This will love it!

Word of Caution: You need to make a balance. The people and the things you arrange for the party, from friends to music to food to ambience to candies, should reflect the childhood memory of both your parents. None of the two should feel that something is missing from their past.