Your idea is to have a cute place for cards — and potential thieves love that idea, too, since it makes a great carrying case for their loot. Make sure to lock up your gifts! Birdcage card box from Favors Depot.

When I logged on to Facebook this morning, this status update from Carrie Wildes, a Tampa-based wedding photographer, popped out at me, bold as a newspaper headline:

“at my wedding on Saturday someone STOLE the box you put all the cards in! They later found it in the dumpster and [ . . . ] were able to get some of it back. What is wrong with people??”

There aren’t many worse ways to end a wedding day than discovering someone — a guest?  A worker?  A party crasher? — stole the cards with your guests’ well wishes . . . and in many cases, cash and gift cards.

Unfortunately though, sometime things get stolen at weddings. And it’s not as uncommon as the unsuspecting bride might think. Wedding website The Knot offers tips about how to prevent or deal with wedding day theft, including locking up gifts, purchasing wedding day insurance, or even hiring wedding security.

At my wedding, the site coordinator whisked all the cards into her office and locked the door as soon as the reception began, and while none of my own friends have ever lost their cards (to my knowledge), that Facebook status hit close to home — because the wedding Carrie photographed this past weekend was in my hometown, and several of my friends are friends of the bride.

Please don’t let that happen to you!

I have to say, opening our wedding gifts after our honeymoon was more fun than Christmas morning, and reading all our guests’ cards was definitely one of the highlights. What a shame it would be to lose those blessings and words of wisdom because someone decided to sift through them for cash.

~ Laura