A lovely knife? I keep thinking about ordering this one. A nice wood cutting board to go with it would make a lasting but useful gift. If you want to spend more, there are some lovely knives made in the U.S. as well.

I was married almost 60 years ago....hard to believe but true.
Every so often I stop and realize that what I am using was a wedding gift.
Those things I still use regularly are a pair of very high quality stainless trays. They are my serve food from the grill trays. used the small one for 2 burgers tonight.
And a Descoware....which was a precourser of Le Cruset...small lidded sauce pan.....and a matching small fry pan.
And 2 Revere sauce pans....1 qt and 1 1/2 qt....boiled more eggs than I can imagine and cooked up veggies for dinner before the microwave.
And a set of sterling salad tossers. I use them every time I make a salad for more than just me....and when my husband was alive, I used them daily. Also a huge turkey platter in my iron stone mason's ware.
And I was rfeaching for a towel from the "car wash towel" stack to mop some water from the bottom of the freezer....and realized it was a monogrammed wedding girt.....frayed and ratty but still useful!
And I got 4 place settings of my sterling, which I use daily....although I have added lots to it in the meanwhile.
The martini pitchers, ceramic ash trays, place mats, coffee carafe's, juice sets ( remember them?) and appliances are long gone.
Good quality and someting inherently useful will be remembered for many years.

Something that's kind of out of fashion, so they're not likely to get four of, and which is beautiful, enduring, useful and fairly easy to store is a really nice full sized tablecloth. Even if they're not stylish, sometimes you really need a good tablecloth.

I have a nephew who's getting married next month, and they did sign up with Zola for their wedding gifts, but it was very interesting to me to see how different it is from what gift registries used to be.

There were a lot of experiential gifts on their list, like cooking classes for my nephew, special things for them to do on their 3 month and first year anniversaries in addition to kitchenware and barware. A fund for date nights. Coffee subscription.

I was a little surprised, but they did want two place settings of Kate Spade china and also a big set of tidbit plates and small bowls for entertaining.

One thing I liked a lot was that they had several larger gifts that were tagged as group presents, so you could only contribute part of the cost. That would sure have been helpful to me back when all my friends seemed to be getting married around the same time and I was just starting out without much cash. And I liked the fact that you could see what people had already gotten them and what was still available on the list.

ETA If they drink, copper barware is very popular right now and would last well.

Pillog, I got a beautiful irish linen damask cloth and napkins for a wedding gift. it's yellow....I didn't own any dishes it would go with it. So I gave it to my mother in law because she had china with yellow flowers. When she downsized I got it back. I guess I could use it with the white haviland....but I guess I will give ti to my daughter who has her grandmother's china.
But you are right about a table cloth....I was years before I had a nice one.

We received a covered casserole like this that I still use every week. Not so much for cooking anymore, but now for things I want to keep covered in the refer, like cleaned berries. I also received some hand made pottery bowls of different types that I still use for serving food at potlucks/picnics or informal parties at my home. I think a beautiful set of salad servers is a nice gift - most people, even young folks, still seem to eat and even make salads once in a while. And I think anything to serve party food on, interesting (even vintage) platters or cheese servers, etc. are likely to be used. If they drink alcohol they might appreciate some beautiful beer glasses. Iittala and Kosta Boda both make some gorgeous ones. Iittala beer glasses

Anything from the website Tishtosh indicated above. I'd also go with either a beautiful platter or a table cloth.

The last two weddings (last year for a niece and the other for a nephew) weren't your typical weddings because they were already in established households, so the typical "new household" gifts didn't really fit. So I tried to create a family heirloom for them in a disposable world.

I crocheted 12 lacy napkin rings, matching coasters, several doilies in different shapes/sizes, and a table runner, purchased linen hemstitched napkins (one set in white and one in red for holidays) and my husband made an oak chest (and lined it) to put them in. I included a pre-paid VISA card and the web-site where they could order a matching tablecloth the size/shape they needed, since I didn't have that information.

For the shower gift I gave a well-appointed picnic basket and made a fun quilt to go with it. I often give a picnic basket and hand-made quilt for a wedding gift. I dislike gift registries the way they are done today, except when it comes to china and flatware - which almost no one does anymore. Today's gift registries remind me of getting the Sears Christmas Catalog when I was a child and I would take a crayon and circle everything in the catalog I wanted and expected "someone" to DELIVER. ;-)

-Grainlady

I went through the same thing as you last year - 3 nephews getting married. I used their gift registry. What I really wanted to give them was one of Ann's beautiful cutting boards, but those are out of my budget. So, I settled on giving each of them a dutch oven from their registry. I use mine quite a bit, and they last longer than most things.

One thing I still have is a large (around 18 x 24) acrylic cutting board. It's not fancy, but it's lasted 39 years and counting. It's light weight, and can be used for almost anything, even to protect the dining table so my grandson to play with play dough.

Sally

I'm still using the Le Cruset we got 33 years ago. I admit I'm superstitious about gift knives :-/ We've often given a picnic hamper filled with gourmet goodies to be enjoyed on the honeymoon so they don't have to go out to eat if they'd prefer not to :-)

I had to buy my linen tablecloth and napkins on eBay, but there are some good prices there. I also bought a crystal decanter on eBay, but I do not use that very often. The plates I like most that I bought on eBay are pasta plates/bowls, which are somewhere between a plate and a bowl - like a bowl with a very large flat rim that is handy for putting bread on.

If they eat sushi, then sushi plates/sets could be something nice that people do not often think of, and they are easy to store. I use sushi plates almost every week, including the ones I got from Lee in a swap. You can get some very beautiful dipping bowls from Spain and Italy, which are great for olive oil, but can also be used for mise en place. Another somewhat unusual item is Japanese rice bowls - I love the size of them and use them more for ice cream than anything else.

Another item on eBay is wooden bowls, either vintage (circa 1960) or hand turned of exotic woods. I have three sets of vintage wooden salad bowls (large bowl with four individual bowls) from the 1960s that I love. One set is teak and had a bad lacquer finish on it, and therefore it was cheap, but I simply stripped the old finish and refinished the bowls with carnauba wax.

Too bad you do not make quilts - my nephew's favorite wedding gift was a quilt that our cousin made and gave to him. She had asked me what to give him, and I picked out a quilt she had made with cowboy print fabric - not my taste, but my nephew loved it. The first wedding gift I ever bought was a Navajo print comforter from Neiman-Marcus, that I gave to an ex college roommate.

Dansk makes excellent pepper mills.

Fortunately Lars, my MIL is still with us and no doubt quilting away for them, : )

She no longer teaches or travels but is still at it.

Pepper mills!. I did give those as gifts at one time. Still have mine from 20yrs ago.

I remembered this morning when we were doing massive pruning and home repairs gone wild, (unattended stuff)...our gift for a few years for younger friends...a good cordless drill. Good gift for young ones in apartments and moving and buying their first homes. Dewalt was a classic. That was 20yrs ago and many weddings all summers for a few yrs. Heard forever how great that was and appreciated.

LindaC, it's funny, I don't even own one single thing that I got as a wedding gift from my first marriage. I do remember getting four cookie jars and five or six chip-n-dip sets, that was the big thing. My "good china" was a Christmas gift from my then mother-in-law, who didn't like my dishes from the supermarket, so she bought me some that she liked. They are in a plastic box in the pole barn.

However, I do still have and display a pink glass candy dish that my Grandmother got as a wedding present.

Annie

Annie, you got 6 Chip and dips....we got 6 martini pitchers with a pair of glasses each........what does that tell you!?...wink!

We have a lot of craft fairs in the area in the spring and fall. I have given hand-turned wooden bowls, carved wooden serving ware, and ceramic serving bowls and platters. For one couple, I had their wedding invitation mounted and framed.

We got a very pretty but perfectly ordinary philodendron. Forty-eight years later it's huge and still going strong. I've given parts of it away millions of times, wish I'd thought to give parts to my kids when they married.

LindaC, it tells me we should have lived closer together. With those presents, we could have had big parties, LOL.

Sheesh, I think plants are a very good idea. Even better, fruit trees, but that's assuming that the couples have their own places and don't live in apartments or rental places that wouldn't allow planting.

Annie

Hadn't thought of plants for gifts! Christmas cactus will live forever, and bloom every year so that might be an option for a wedding gift. I have nothing from my wedding in 1965 but I do have the cut glass pitcher and glasses that we given to my grandparents when they were married in 1910. Seems anything made of glass lasts forever too.

Fruit trees, what a great idea if it's feasible.

As far as the chip and dip sets and all, I was greatly amused to see that my nephew and his fiancee actually had a fondue set listed among their desired gifts. First time I ever heard anyone actually request one.

Fondue is "in" again, and still seems exotic to the young. :)

We attended a wedding last year; it was at a lovely seaside hotel. I sketched a view and framed it as a gift (but many places have/sell cards, drawings, etc. that might make nice framed gifts) either of the venue or church. Was also thinking to screen print (they can digitally print on fabrics now) the latitude and longitude of the wedding location (kind of an outdoor sunbrella type fabric pillow) ... but that could be engraved onto a glass or cutting board...so its a bit subtle but a memento. Congratulations an hope its a great fun summer!

Years ago we had a nice art / craft store where we liked to purchase gifts. We gave at least 2 beautiful kaleidoscopes ( wood case with glass pieces inside). Totally useless but fun. I do like to give good quality glasses ( but not nec'ly crystal) because you can go through a lot of glasses in a lifetime. Seem to lose them in both joy and anger.

I bought some beautiful hand-blown shot glasses at the Ventura Art Fair, and I intended to use them as gifts but ended up keeping them for myself. I also kept the art glass wine stoppers I bought there.