By Shawn Callaghan Diaz

My mother asked me to design a card for her for a business venture she was starting while I was in college. The idea came to her when she and my father were vacationing in England and Ireland. They had stopped minting sixpences and she brought home several hundred. My mother loves good luck charms with romantic sentiments attached to them and when she met and married her college sweetheart, John Patrick Callaghan, she hit the motherload of lucky charms and limericks. It was then she learned of the good luck wedding tradition of putting a sixpence in the bride’s shoe.

It was my favorite thing to give friends from college as one by one we got married.   Now, it is my favorite gift to give to the children of my friends who are marrying, along with a shawl that my good friend and neighbor Erin Sinnott monograms with the wedding date and new initials. She is so talented and monograms just about anything. It’s such a special treat when something is made just for you.

Little could I imagine the life this art project I did for my mother over 30 years ago would take on. My mother continues to send these sixpences around the world to people looking for something thoughtful to give to the bride on her wedding day.

It will come full circle when I give one of these to my girls or my son’s bride. We can never have enough lucky charms.

Something Old,

Something New,

Something Borrowed,

Something Blue,

Happy is the Bride with a Sixpence in her Shoe!