The books we gave at our wedding
What we chose for our guests as wedding favours
We’re in June and it’s officially wedding season. I love this time of year, it’s so fun celebrating love and seeing feeds fill up with photos of joy and happiness. My husband and I just celebrated our third wedding anniversary with a super fun weekend in Paris, where we did nothing but roll around the Marais eating good fun and drinking great wine. A truly great decision (which we dithered over before going for it, and I’m so glad we did).
Three years has both flown by, and yet feels a million years from where we were when we got married: in, and about to come out of, another UK lockdown. Time in that period still feels warped and bizarre to process, I often struggle to remember how old I am or how many years ago something was.
We got engaged in the first UK lockdown, so we planned our wedding knowing full well the state of affairs. In the end it suited us perfectly, we had always played around with doing something small and lowkey, and it was so nice to have the first time getting our families together post lockdown to be at our wedding. It made it feel really special. The other pleasure of having such a small celebration is that I really leant into things I might previously have written off. In our case, this was debating what a fun wedding favour might be. Only one correct answer here: selecting a book for everyone.
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For our parents
Curtis Sittenfeld is one of my favourite authors and American Wife is her best one (in my opinion)
Pachinko: A real epic, super interesting and a book my husband and I had recently devoured
Small Pleasures was long listed for the women’s prize that year and I loved it. Part historical novel, part medical mystery
One of the more profound books we’d read in a long time was James Nestor’s study of nose breathing vs mouth breathing in Breath. We have bought this for lots of people and still use surgical tape at night to help shift to nasal breathing
For the Maid of Honour + Best Man
I absolutely adore Midnight Chicken … the recipes are fab and the writing is amazing. Exactly the type of book I’d want to write
We both love Ryan Gattis and Safe is our fave, although all are excellent. The setting, interwoven plot and unforgettable characters makes for a story you wish would never end
For our siblings
The Garden of Evening Mists is one of those books that evokes such a sense of time and place that it instantly transports you from the sofa to the highlands of Malaysia
This was the summer of Untamed and wow did I buy this for a lot of people. ‘We can do hard things’ still lives on in my head (and heart)
Another book I wish I’d written: Early Morning Riser. I snorted with laughter on multiple occasions
My husband’s hands down favourite writer is Cormac McCarthy, and The Sunset Limited is, as a screenplay, probably his shortest work but the subject and themes are just as uncompromising as the rest of his books
For our nieces and nephews (of various ages)
Modern Love: A collection from the weekly The New York Times column which inspired the hit Netflix series. The series did a good job at selecting some crackers from this, but there are many more stories in here which are must reads
A coming of age story based in NYC, I adore City of Girls. I loved how this feels like a few books in one, and watching the changes in the city over the years
My copy of To Kill a Mockingbird is so battered, it’s a book I’ve read (and studied) so many times over the years. It’s so much more fun to read it and love it before you have to read it at school, so we were hoping to get this in there early
Noughts and Crosses. Favourite ever book growing up, favourite book ever still? Truly iconic
Here’s the list:
American Wife by Curtis Sittenfeld
Pachinko by Min Jee Lee
Small Pleasures by Clare Chambers
Breath by James Nestor
Midnight Chicken by Ella Risbridger
Safe by Ryan Gattis
The Garden of Evening Mists by Tan Twan Eng
Untamed by Glennon Doyle
Early Morning Riser by Katherine Heiny
The Sunset Limited by Cormac McCarthy
Modern Love by Daniel Jones
City of Girls by Elizabeth Gilbert
To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Noughts and Crosses by Malorie Blackman
You can find the full list here.
Other lists you might like:
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