Unusual gifts for couples

The unusual gifts that land are the ones about this specific couple, not the ones that are strange in general. A novelty object is unusual for about a week. Something built out of their own names, photographs and history stays unusual, because there is no second copy of it anywhere.

There is a test for this, and most 'unique gift' lists fail it

Ask one question about anything you are considering: could you give this to a different couple without changing it?

If yes, it is not unusual. It is unfamiliar, which is a different and much weaker thing. The whisky-stone set, the personalised star map, the shaped candle, the wooden puzzle box, the his-and-hers dressing gowns are all unfamiliar the first time you see them and completely generic the second. Every list you have opened is full of them, because unfamiliar objects are easy to photograph and easy to sell.

If no, and the gift would make no sense given to anyone else, you have found the thing. That is the whole method. Everything below is either a way of making a gift specific, or a genuinely good object that we think is worth the money and that we do not sell.

A note on wording, since people search both: unique gifts for couples and unusual gifts for couples are the same question, and this page is the answer to both.

Games that ask questions people would not ask on their own

These are objects, they arrive in a box, and they can be wrapped, which is why they are first. A question game is unusual in the way that matters: what happens is different every time, and it is different for every couple, because the content is their answers.

We're Not Really Strangers sell a Couples Edition for $20. The Couples Edition is $20, written for two players. It is blunt, it escalates fast, and it suits people who like being put on the spot.

{THE AND} Couples Edition from The Skin Deep starts at $22. It is gentler and more interview-shaped than We're Not Really Strangers, and there is a separate Long-Term Couples Edition at the same prices if they have been together a decade or more.

We make a competing product and we are still telling you to look at these first if what you want is a real box on the day. That is not modesty. If you buy one of those and it is wrong for them, the box is still a nice object. Our thing is a link, and a wrong link is nothing.

Something built out of their own material

This is the category that passes the test every time, because the gift literally cannot be given to anyone else.

A photo book of one specific event, not a year in review. Artifact Uprising softcovers start at $19, hardcovers at $59. Thirty photographs from one weekend, in order, with the dull ones cut, is a much better object than two hundred photographs from a year. The editing is what makes it a gift rather than a data dump.

Storyworth starts at $59. It sends one question a week for a year by email or text, collects what they write or say, and prints the lot as one hardcover book. It is a strange thing to receive, in a good way, because the gift keeps arriving every week for twelve months and then turns into an object at the end.

Our own product belongs here. The wheel at connectionquestions.com is $11 once. The free version is a wheel of general questions. The paid version takes their names, their photographs and the things only they find funny, and writes them into the questions, so what comes up is about the airport incident rather than about relationships in the abstract. That is the whole reason it is on this page. Unusual, for us, means the questions could not be asked of anyone else.

Something they would never book for themselves

The other route to unusual is the thing they would enjoy and would feel silly buying. Two people with reasonable jobs will buy their own dinner. They will not buy themselves a glass-blowing morning.

Aim at the activity that neither of them is good at. A class where one person is the expert is a lesson with an audience. A class where both are bad is the same evening for both of them, and the story afterwards is the gift. Pottery, blacksmithing, sailing, a specific regional cuisine, life drawing, a night walk with someone who knows the birds.

Book the date. A voucher is a chore you have handed over, and vouchers for classes have a way of sitting in a drawer until they expire.

Something that is not a thing at all

A subscription with a point of view rather than a general one. The Criterion Channel at $10.99 a month or $99.99 a year is the clean example: it is curated, so it changes what they watch rather than adding to what they could watch. A general streaming service is not a gift, it is a bill.

A donation in their names to something they actually care about, which only works if you know the specific thing and would be a cop-out if you do not.

An arrangement rather than an item: you will look after their dog for the week in March so they can go somewhere. Written down, with the dates. It is the least photogenic gift on this page and it is the one most likely to be remembered.

The unusual gifts that do not work

Subscription boxes for a category they have not asked about. A monthly hot sauce box is a decision you have made about their kitchen, twelve times.

The joint hobby starter kit, where one of them is interested and the other is being enrolled. This is the most common failure in this whole category. It is a gift to one person disguised as a gift to two.

Anything that depends on both of them keeping a new daily habit. Two people, every day, forever, is a long bet, and the object sits there afterwards as a reminder that the bet did not come off.

Novelty homeware. It is funny in the shop and it is on a shelf in their house for the next four years.

What it should cost, and why that is the wrong first question

Unusual is not a price bracket. The $19 photo book of one weekend is more unusual than a $200 hamper, because the hamper exists in a warehouse and the photo book only exists because you sat down and chose thirty pictures.

What actually scales with money in this category is not strangeness, it is effort you are outsourcing. A booked class costs more than a card game because someone else is running the evening. A photo book costs less than either because you did the work. If your budget is small, spend the difference in attention and the gift gets better, not worse.

The one place to spend properly is anything with two people in it. A class for two, a dinner for two, a night away for two are all double, and quietly halving it by buying one ticket and hoping is the most common way this category goes wrong.

A rough shape that works: under $30, make it specific. Thirty to a hundred, buy the good object or the year-long thing. Over a hundred, book something with a date on it and pay for both of them.

How to choose between these in two minutes

If you want something wrapped and opened on the day, buy a card game or the photo book. If you want them to have a story afterwards, book the class on a specific date. If you want the gift to keep going, Storyworth. If you want it to be unmistakably about them and you have $11, our wheel does that and does nothing else.

If you cannot decide, the photo book is the highest floor on this list. It is very hard to make one that lands badly, as long as you cut the boring photographs.

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