Please don’t make me open that gift in front of everyone

It was Lauren Presser’s bridal shower and about 50 people were on the guest list. At the time, she lived in Orlando, Fla., but the party was to take place in her hometown of Johnstown, Pa. It wouldn’t be realistic to fly home with 50 gifts, so Presser’s mother decided that gift cards would be appropriate. Presser was thrilled. Cash money, baby. Plus, no “official” gifts meant that there wouldn’t be that terrible gift-opening part of a traditional shower.

But Presser’s mother had other plans.

“She’s like, ‘Well, all these people came for you, so you’re going to open all of their gifts,’” Presser, a lawyer, said. “She made me sit there and open every single card.” As she went from envelope to envelope, Presser, now 39, said she was “praying” a plane would crash through the ceiling to put her out of her misery.

“I’m sitting up there and that was literally what it was like: ‘Oh, a Bed Bath & Beyond card. Thank you so much.’ Two seconds later, ‘Oh, my gosh, another Bed Bath & Beyond card,’” she said. “There was probably a stretch of 15 to 20 in a row that were just Bed Bath & Beyond, Bed Bath & Beyond, Bed Bath & Beyond.”

This was 2010, though. Ancient times, really, in terms of the expectation and etiquette around the antiquated tradition of opening gifts in front of your guests. It’s possible we have all hated the tradition for centuries — the oohs, the ahhs, the silent suffering in the gift-opening spotlight, the blushing from said spotlight, and the unspoken torment as a guest who must pretend to be interested in the wedding shower gift given by a friend’s mother-in-law. And speaking of, here’s another gift-opening story for you.

IT WASN’T SO BAD

Gina Vasoli, a retail general manager, had no idea she was going to be forced into opening gifts at her bridal shower at her home in Philadelphia in 2013. “When I realized, I had to go cry in a bedroom briefly to prepare,” she said.

It ultimately wasn’t so bad, she said, except for a gift from her mother-in-law. “I unwrapped it and found that it was a huge custom-made flag to hang in front of our house. It was green and had two large white figures, a prince and a princess, on it. I also think it said ‘Mr. and Mrs.’ in big script at the bottom.”

House flags are very much not her thing, said Vasoli, now 39, and she awkwardly laughed through it and hoped she’d never see the flag again. (She did, but we’ll get to that later.)

The question isn’t why would anyone give an adult woman a fairy-tale-theme house flag; it’s more, why would we subject ourselves to receiving it in front of an audience — especially in an era where we don’t take for granted any time spent together in person? Does this old-fashioned pomp in our new, modern circumstances still make sense?

According to a survey conducted this spring by the wedding website Zola, no. Some 75% of its respondents said they did not want to open gifts in front of people at their wedding showers. One-third even said they were going for “casual and coed” vibes, and there is nothing casual about the forced fun of opening a gift and then putting its big bow on your head.

WHAT FEELS RIGHT

Emily Forrest, Zola’s director of communications, wasn’t surprised by the survey results. She thinks that people just feel more comfortable these days doing what feels right for them, regardless of what any old-fashioned tradition might have dictated.

“I do think there may still be some type of generational difference in the expectations of what a wedding shower should be, and what the experience is,” she said. “More and more couples have showers where they’re changing some of these traditions.”

If the past 2 ½ years have taught us anything, it’s that we should treasure time spent, in person, with the ones we love. (And that we should wash our hands.) The true gift at any shower is the togetherness, Forrest said; instead of holding up and showing our guests a flag we just got, or a plastic rectangle redeemable for travel, or heck, even a nice KitchenAid that we’re genuinely excited about, maybe we embrace the community and not the custom.

There is one custom, though, that isn’t going anywhere: thank you notes. Forrest said they’re still very much a thing. Because, to be clear, not opening gifts in front of people isn’t about shunning appreciation for the thought, effort and money that goes into them; it’s about using the time in the way the person being celebrated wants, she said. As a result, opening gifts in public is now more of a choice than a foregone conclusion.

‘A HEARTFELT THANK YOU’

We know what Presser, given the chance, would have chosen. “I just want to say a genuine, heartfelt thank you,” she said, “and then I want to go talk to everyone or move on to the next thing.” This might mean wedding vow Mad Libs or maybe just sipping a whiskey neat before noon with friends from out of town.

And if you find yourself on the eve of your wedding getting paraded around an Idaho rodeo by horse and carriage with a green prince and princess flag your mother-inlaw gave you strung up on a pole, waving in the wind as you’re galloped past friends, family and strangers by a man named Ian, well, then you and Vasoli have a lot in common.

And where is this gift now? “The flag is folded up in a box in our garage somewhere,” she said “never to see the light of day.”

Except maybe, she conceded, for a 25th-anniversary celebration. For which no shower will be needed.