Ask Polly: Gifts

Welcome to Ask Polly, the UK’s first poly advice column! We invite readers to send poly-related questions to our resident columnist, Polly, and she’ll do her very best to offer advice. You’re also very much encouraged to join the conversation in the comments. Polly can be contacted by email, on polly at polytical dot org, or via Polytical’s Facebook or twitter. Ask Polly will be published twice a month, and you can read more here.

Dear Polly,

It will be my partner’s wedding anniversary just before Valentine’s day, and I’d like to get her and her husband a card or present, but it seems that whilst cards for truly fabulous husbands and wives are available, no such thing exists for poly situations.

Can you help me?

Anonymous

Hi Anonymous,

What a lovely idea!

You’re absolutely right – while Hallmark and the like have personalised cards for every occasion and every conceivable kind of family member, and while businesses everywhere seem to be cashing in on the pink pound, capitalism mostly doesn’t seem to have cottoned on to the spending power of poly folks just yet. Which is brilliant! If you’re looking for poly-specific cards and gifts, chances are that the nice ones will have been made in small batches and with love by Actual Poly People.

I’m going to throw out a whole bunch of general gift suggestions, and then list a few links to poly-themed gifts online.

It’s their wedding anniversary – what about a standard ‘happy wedding anniversary’ card? If you’d like to nod to their being a partner and metamour, rather than (“just”) friends, you could confer appreciation for that in the message inside. You could even send seperate cards to each of them, or write seperate messages inside one card, if you’d like to be a bit more specific.

Blank, generic, pretty cards are also brilliant – remember that your words and thoughts are loads more important than the design of the card itself! Something pretty, possibly themed with something you all share (cooking? flowers? cycling?) would do very nicely. Alternatively, you could make them a card! Find some pretty coloured paper and some glue and have a play – you could draw stuff, or collage pictures and patterns onto it. The effort and personalisation will be much appreciated, I’m sure!

Likewise, the best kinds of presents tend to lean more towards the practical and thoughtful than the specifically-themed, and hand-made can be even nicer. Flowers, chocolates, wine or a cheeseboard can be shared and enjoyed by them both, or by all of you if you’d like. And if you’d like to hand-make more personalised things, cupcakes or cookies with poly-themed messages iced onto them could be lots of fun. Check out Instructables and Crafting A Greener World for other handmade gift ideas.

Alternatively, rather than giving material things, you could offer yourself and your time. How about a gift of child-sitting, garden maintenence, dog walking, cooking meals or housework? You could design a voucher offering a certain number of hours for them to redeem, or just include that offer in their card – make it specific (‘three nights of child-sitting’) rather than a general offer, and they’ll be more likely to take it up.

Sometimes it’s lovely to have poly-themed merchandise to consider as well. Zazzle and
Cafepress are two big chains that’ll provide all manner of poly-themed t-shirts, mugs and badges, but there are also a few small businesses that hand-craft much lovelier things:

- Poly In Pictures do personalised books and postcards.

- Poly Charms do absolutely beautiful poly-themed jewelry.

- Etsy has artists making all manner of beautiful things – try searching for ‘infinite love’, ‘polyamory’ and even just ‘love’.

I hope that you find or create something lovely, and that your partner and metamour have a wonderful anniversary!

With love,

Polly

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