Something that has been a big concern for me (and for Girl Scout Fiancée, probably more so) is the idea of what to do with our registry. I know it's a bit gauche to talk about wedding gifts, but we've already had people asking where we were planning on registering, and, as this blog is geared toward helping other couples, I'm going to break etiquette barriers and talk about it frankly. Thing is, we've been living together for over six years now, so most of the stuff that newlyweds need for their house has been in residence with us for a long time now. In fact, over the course of the last two years we've made great strides in getting rid of stuff and de-cluttering our house (despite what my game room may look like, we've actually gotten rid of lots of things), and the idea of a bunch of wedding gifts, well intentioned as they may be, cluttering up the house certainly gives us the creeps.
After doing some research into honeymoon registries, however, I think we've both decided that it's the way to go for us. Even I, the unfrozen caveman groom to be, know that it's extremely bad form to just ask for money, but we also want to stop people from spending money on something we're just going to return. Knowing my family, if we don't give them some direction, they're going to go off and get us things anyways. Instead, we're hoping that by doing a honeymoon registry our friends and family will contribute to our ability to have an amazing experience that we'll treasure for the rest of our lives instead of a toaster that we will treasure once a month when we make toast.
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| My worst nightmare. |
After signing up for the registry, I went through and added all of the restaurants and events that I knew we wanted to do, including the Wild Africa Trek at Animal Kingdom and the Spirit of Aloha luau at the Polynesian resort. Many of the restaurants I want us to go to are available to choose for gift items, so I added those too. Once I had all the major events in, I then started looking at some of the other items, like souvenir money, hotel room contributions, and "fun money" for the honeymoon, and added plenty of those in various denominations to ensure that people didn't feel like they needed to give us $150 for a dinner just because it was listed.
I feel like there are a lot of upsides to the honeymoon registry, including keeping down the clutter in our house, making it easy for people who are not coming of the wedding to give us a wedding gift, and yet at the same time keeping people from feeling any kind of pressure to contribute. Plus, the fact that folks can choose to give us specific events and meals as gifts keeps it from being quite as mercenary as just asking for money.We're also going to take photos of anything that folks give us as a part of the honeymoon registry to include in thank-you cards.
There are some serious drawbacks, though. First of all, the list of gifts to choose from is far from complete, and there's no option to add your own (either as the couple, or as a gift-giver). For example, I know we want to eat at the California Grille and La Celier, but I can't add custom items for those to our list. Likewise, since the honeymoon registry goes through a third party, there's a percentage taken off of each gift as a service charge. It's small, but that still means we won't be getting the full value of the gift. Of course, I'm a little concerned about looking gauche, even though everything I've read says that people who do honeymoon registries end up being really happy with the results. Personally, I'm just not sure of the etiquette behind letting people know about it, and I have no idea how many people will actually contribute, so it may end up being a big waste of time.
In the end, I think both Girl Scout Fiancée are excited about the honeymoon registry, but we both have some reservations as to how well it will work out.
