Buying a sample wedding dress is a smart choice for many reasons. It is a cost-effective, eco-friendly option that offers immediate availability and the chance to own a unique gown.

The most obvious benefit of opting for a sample wedding dress is the cost. Wedding dresses can be prohibitively expensive, with prices often running into thousands of dollars.

If all the good gifts from the couple’s registry are already taken, we’ve got you covered: We tapped our in-house gifting experts, as well as wedding planning pros, to assemble a list of the ...

Gifts aren’t necessary, but they’re the icing on the cake Historically, guests send off the newlyweds into married life with gifts of household items (hence, the wedding registry).

Fortunately, many traditional wedding gifts are still very much in play in 2021. Housewares and kitchen upgrades are a perennial favorite. So are honeymoon- and travel-related items.

A version of this article appears in print on Nov. 27, 2022, Section ST, Page 20 of the New York edition with the headline: Great Wedding Gifts, on the Registry and Beyond.

A survey of 1,000 wedding guests conducted by The Knot found that the average guest spent $150 on a wedding gift last year, with gifts increasing in value for closer friends and family members.

Bustle, a sample wedding dress shop in Birmingham, recently shared the news to their social media pages with the words, “Hey Mom, we went viral,” followed by numerous white hearts.

How to avoid: To avoid theft, Ms. Hutt suggests couples store gifts in a secure location, such as a hotel room, or even in a locked box, instead of out in the open.