Do yourself a huge favor and check the calendar right now. You may notice that a date is creeping up now that all of your holiday festivities have (mostly) ended. The Christmas lights are down and the mess you made during your New Year’s Eve party has long since been cleaned up.
When you take a deep breath and sense that love is in the air, you know February 14th is coming up fast. And when you start to get bombarded by not-so-subtle ads on your phone and in the mall, then there’s no mistaking it - Valentine’s day is coming.
Now you can start preparing to have a nice time on what is supposed to be a day that celebrates romantic love. You can get a menu together to make food at home or you can make reservations at a nice restaurant.
But there’s one more aspect of the day that you absolutely cannot neglect and that’s the gift. You need to get your paramour something nice for the day. But what you get her might depend on how long you’ve been together. There’s one problem: the woman that you’re dating is from Ukraine and your familiarity with Ukrainian women doesn’t extend that far past her.
Which means that you’re kind of stuck when it comes to thinking up gifts that would be perfect for a Ukrainian woman on the one day of the year when the world collectively celebrates romance.
Get her something too nice at the beginning of a relationship and you come across as too forward and you might scare her off. Get her something that’s not nice enough and you’ll come across as not all that interested in her and that, in turn, will make her interest in you wane.
So you need to find something that’s in that sweet spot of being nice enough for the length of the relationship but also preferably not super expensive unless money’s no object in which case you can ignore the second point and also good for you.
New relationships around Valentine’s day can be pretty tricky because of how new they are and how nebulous and undefined things can be between a couple. But there are a few gifts that can make the day go a little more smoothly. If you plan on marrying a Ukrainian woman, you have to make sure that the early stages of the relationship go well.
An easy and casual gift to give when it’s still pretty early in the relationship is a gift card. Gift cards function a lot like cash except that they can only be used in one particular store whereas cash is accepted pretty much everywhere.
Plus, gift cards give the recipient the freedom to choose their own gift, on the condition that her choices are limited to whatever store you choose to buy the gift cards from.
A Valentine’s day staple is the combination of flowers and chocolates. It’s almost tradition for one partner to present the other with a bouquet of flowers and a chocolates packaged in a box made to resemble an anatomically-incorrect heart.
The great thing is that they’re so closely-associated with the day that you can buy flowers and chocolates pretty much anywhere. Forget going to a chocolatier or a florist. You don’t need to drop that kind of money on either. You can go to a pharmacy, convenience store, or even a gas station and get a bouquet and a box of chocolates.
Sure, the American chocolate is going to be a lot different than the food in Ukraine, but she’s sure to love it all the same.
Another staple of the (not technically a) holiday is a stuffed animal. It’s not altogether uncommon for a person to get their partner a stuffed animal with a message declaring affection stitched somewhere prominently, like the belly.
And much like the combination of flowers and chocolates, they’re so closely associated with the day that they’re available everywhere. Sure, you could get something custom made a few weeks in advance. Or you could pop by a drug store and pick something up that’s basically the same thing.
Hopefully, you’ll get to a point where the relationship is a lot more established. Hopefully, you’ll move past that awkward stage where everything is nebulous and you’ll get to a point where there’s a lot more definition in the relationship. At this point, the gifts are going to have to change and become a little more meaningful.
Some people like to do their daily chores because doing chores lets them turn off their brain and let their bodies go on autopilot for a while. But other people don’t like doing chores because they’re inconvenient and they take up a lot of time.
Well, if you want a happy marriage, then get a cordless vacuum cleaner. They make doing one particular chore - vacuuming - a lot easier to do.
Sure, jewelry is great and all, but there are few things in the world more valuable than experience. You could drop a pretty penny on something shiny. Or you could take that penny and use it on a really nice vacation instead.
Taking a trip as a couple is great. You don’t have to take the trip on Valentine’s day. You can just show her the tickets and the itinerary and the confirmation for the hotel room. That way, she’ll have something to look forward to in the future.
Just make sure that you pick somewhere you both can go. Not all countries are as welcoming of the Ukrainian passport as they are of its American counterpart.
So, now you’ve got a few options for Valentine’s day. You don’t have to use any of them. You’re free to think of something on your own. But the guide does narrow down your choices.