Couple Opens Wedding Gift Nine Years After Saying ‘I Do’

They started inadvertently saving the gift in case they needed it for a much worse fight, believing the box could contain some secret to a happy marriage from Aunt Alison, who had been married for nearly 50 years. While reflecting on the more monumental gifts they’d received, the couple decided that the unopened box was the gift that meant the most.

As Kathy Gunn and her husband, Brandon, sat on their deck with a glass of wine in hand, and the kids asleep in bed, they discussed the gift they should get for an upcoming wedding they were attending. “There were even a couple of instances where we both considered giving up.but we never opened the box”. “As my Great Uncle Bill would say, ‘Nothing is ever so bad that it couldn’t get worse'”.

“For nine years (and three moves) that box sat high on a shelf in various closets gathering dust”, she says.

Kathy said she and her husband had plenty of “disagreements, arguments and slammed doors” over the past nine years, but they both never turned to the box.

‘I honestly think that we both avoided turning to the box, because it would have symbolised our failure, ‘ she admitted, adding that they were also second guessing themselves.

Over the next 9 years, Gunn said she and her husband had their fair share of tiffs, but chose to wait it out until they were at “their worst”.

Each day, Kathy and Brandon worked through whatever they needed to, together. The instructions for Kathy also contained money with the instructions to buy “pizza, shrimp or something you both like”.

“I felt if we haven’t opened it yet, we’ve got everything we need to make this thing work”, Gunn said. “I realized that the tools for creating and maintaining a strong, healthy marriage were never within that box – they were within us”, Kathy writes. No matter what struggles I am faced with, I know that I can always count on him to be in my corner and me in his. Actually, the easiest part of it all is getting married.

Another commenter identified that the box would be the flawless idea for new parents, too – something to open “when you are both feeling like you aren’t important to one another anymore”.

Finally the pair opened it after a discussion about what to buy a friend on her wedding day led them to comtemplate what their most valued present had been from their own wedding.

Solid advice there, Aunt Alison. The amusing thing? The gift that meant the very most was still sitting in a closet… unopened’. So, it forced us to reassess situations.

The gift was from Kathy Gunn’s great aunt Allison, who had been married to Gunn’s great uncle Bill for almost half a century.

“All along, we assumed that the contents of that box held the key to saving a marriage”. “She also thought it was a great story, but she thought we were insane. That box went beyond what I believe my Great Aunt had intended”.

After spending hours adding the ideal items to your wedding registry, it seems impossible that a bride and groom could just not open one of their wedding gifts.