Ask any couple a year after the wedding which gifts they still use, and the list is shorter than you would expect. It is almost never the thing that photographed best on the gift table.

The gifts that survive tend to have three things in common: they are used weekly, they are better than the version the couple would have bought themselves, and they were not chosen to be clever. Good knives, proper bed linen, a piece of cookware that will outlive the marriage — these come up again and again.

The ones that go back are the novelty items, the second toaster, and anything monogrammed with a date. If you want to give something personal, give an experience with a date attached instead: a dinner, a night away, a lesson in something they have both said they would like to learn.

And if there is a registry, use it. Couples build registries carefully, and quietly resent having to find space for the thing that was not on it.