Planning a celebration? Well I hope you’ve remembered the champagne – its an essential ingredient to any celebration no matter how small. Lastminute.com might not be the usual place that you think about buying your champagne from but it’s a great place to pick up a couple of good quality, reasonably prices bottles.

At the moment there is a buy two get one free offer on Louis de Custine champagne so you can afford to invite an extra guest or two!

If your big day is approaching but you’re yet to have prepared a speech, I have found a website that could be your life saver. www.weddingspeechbuilder.com has thousands of ideas, jokes and templates that can all be used in your speech whether you’re the bride, groom, best man or father of the bride. If you want to produce a memorable wedding speech then simply scroll down the pages to see what topic you want to mention and you will find an array of sentences that will either get an “aaaawww”, “hahahah” or “ooohhhhh”.

This quote is my personal favourite from the Groom speech section: “I think you’ll agree that Linda looks stunning in that magnificent white dress. I feel so proud and honoured to be married to her. And of course, I can at last say: my dish-washer matches my fridge!” – I can imagine this one being used very frequently.

This one is also brilliant: “To allow us to contribute to this celebration, Linda worked out a budget – I had to stop eating and she cut herself down to thirty phone calls a day”. If you want humour at your wedding, this site is a must see!

I was clearing out my wardrobe the other day and i found so many old tickets, programmes, cards and invitiations that i couldn’t bare to throw away because of the memories attached to them. My mum suggested i put them in a photo album which i though was a really good idea but some of the things, like the scroll they gave me on graduation day, wouldn’t go in because they were not flat! I was about to give up and stuff everthing in a bag and put it back in the depths of my wardrobe when i thought about getting a keep-sake box. These boxes are hand made and are much sturdier than a shoe box. They are a great solution because now i can have some smart boxes to separate my nik nacs and they even look good enough to keep them on display. I hope they do one big enough to contain the road sign i collected from my first ever music festival!

Gift lists are always a good thing to set up when you have a special occasion coming up. Apart from making sure you get something you actually want, they make it so much easier for the people buying the presents –people are likely to thank you by getting you a better gift for taking the hassle of traipsing round the shops. But gift lists are only a great idea if you know what you want! I know loads of people that genuinely can’t think of anything they need!

Well I found a great solution for all concerned. The person who is celebrating can set up a list of charitable gifts at The Alternative Gift List. Here they have a chance to list various charities and tangible gifts for each charity that can be bought on their behalf, such as 200 condoms for the Terrance Higgins Aids Trust. Don’t worry no-one has to suffer weird looks in their local Boots – the gift giver just makes the donation and the charity buy the condoms for you and send them to where they are needed. Other gifts include Physiotherapy for 2 polio and civil war victims for one month or a clef lip palate operation. Gifts on the list range from about 10 – £200 pounds check out an example gift list here.

I’ve seen a lot of adverts around for personalised photo books recently. I think they are a great modern take on the photo album. The idea is that you send in a selection of your favourite snaps and they are turned into a classy coffee table book. The books are hard backed and properly bound. They are made using high quality paper and the photos are treated for red eye, date stamp removal and are restored to ensure they look like they are straight from a publishers printing house.

The books even come in a personalised presentation box or tin. These books are a wonderful idea to celebrate an important life event such as a wedding or christening. I think they would be a great gift to give to someone on returning from a holiday, a book displaying what you got up to is so much better than a postcard or a tacky souvenir. They start at £49 for an A5 sized book and you can order one from www.bagsoflove.co.uk

My best friend recently got engaged and I found it really difficult to find a suitable engagement gift. My initial idea was a bottle of champagne but then I presumed everybody else would have thought of that as well; it’s the easy option! I wanted to get something that showed I had put some time and effort into choosing their present so I opted for a Memories photograph album from Marks & Spencer.

My plan was to take lots of photographs at the engagement party then fill the book for them so they had some nice memories of the night. However, after a few glasses of red wine I forgot about the pictures and had to collect them off other people!

While searching for their present I also came across this lovely Memories Box; the box is big enough to store photographs, cards, invitations and other special memories that often get lost in the back of the drawer. It is beautifully decorated with silver diamantes and has a silky ribbon to secure the box shut.

These gifts would also be great for a christening or a wedding present, the photo album is not yet available on their website so you will have to go to a store but the keepsake box is available for £9.50.

The other day I wrote about the great gift ‘message in a bottle’, well now I have found a similar gift ‘message on a bottle’! This thoughtful idea would make a lovely Mother’s Day, birthday or anniversary present; you can choose the text you want to appear on the bottle so really it’s for any occasion.

The bottle is Champagne J. De Telmont from Damery, a blend of Pinot Noir, Meunier and Chardonnay grapes, not that this means anything to me but it might to you if you’re a champagne lover.

Your message can be up to 100 characters long – just enough space to say something like ‘Dear Mum, Thanks for being so great, Happy Mother’s Day, all my love Aimi’. When the champagne has all gone you could place a candle in the top and use it as decoration in your kitchen. This gift is available from lastminute.com for £35.