When you receive a gift card as a present, you get not only free stuff, but you get a guilt-free shopping spree. No wonder wedding couples add gift cards to their wedding registries—you’ve added yours, right? When you get a pile of gift cards among your bridal shower presents, you and your groom get to cruise through the store, filling your shopping cart with all of the home essentials you didn’t get as gifts, plus a few impulse buys, and it’s a big, fat $0 at checkout. My husband and I put our receipt on our refrigerator—it was that much of a thrill! But I’m not talking about gift cards to your bridal registry. I’m talking about other types of gift cards that you’ll love having:

• Gift cards to the nail salon: While you’re on a budget to help you pay for all those wedding details, you still get your mani/pedis. It’s an indulgence that boosts your mood and makes you feel pampered and indulged.
• Gift cards to the craft store: For any DIY projects you’ll take on, you get all of your supplies free when a gift card lets you shop like mad and see that $0 at the checkout counter. You may even enjoy making those 200 favors all the more, knowing everything was a freebie. And you may enjoy sharing your now-more-possible DIY projects with your bridesmaids, mom or daughter.
• Gift cards to restaurants: Date night is important when you’re planning a wedding. You have to connect as a couple, keep the romance going, unwind after a long workday, celebrate the eight month anniversary of the day you got engaged. Gift cards to restaurants let you dine out without any thought to money, so order up that salmon dish instead of the pasta. Again, if you’re on a strict budget to afford your wedding plans, these guilt-free dinners, or lunches, are fantastic.
• Gift cards to your wedding vendors. Many top wedding experts offer gift cards for their services, and if you tell your family that you’d like gift cards to your photographer as your birthday presents, you may get hundreds of dollars off the photographer’s services. The same goes for your floral designer, your beauty salon for your wedding-day hair and makeup and other items on your wedding wishlist. You get to splurge without guilt.
• Gift cards to clothing stores. Because a cute new tee shirt is always fun, a terrific pair of sandals makes you trendy, and you can get your new rehearsal dinner dress for free.

Aisle Files tip: Tell your family and close, already-gift-giving friends about your wish for gift cards a few months before your birthday or the holidays, so that those who shop early know what you’d like. And make sure your groom knows that you’d love gift cards if there’s ever any time he’d like to surprise you with a little something. Happy you with a new mani/pedi and new sandals = no Bridezilla, after all.