Honeymoon Registry Alternative

A couple of years ago, Girl Scout Fiancée and I started going to a new and awesome dentist's office right in the same office plaza where she has her office. One of the nice perks of going to this office is that they reward you for successfully referring someone to their office, to the tune of a $100 gift card from any place you like. Recently, through a stroke of luck, Girl Scout Fiancée referred someone to the dentist's office and had the keen insight to ask for a Disney gift card. At the time, I thought that seemed like a great way to get some spending money for the parks during our honeymoon; little did I consider the greater possibility of using them as an alternative to the Honeymoon Registry.

When I see this, I see a delicious steak at Le Cellier.

As I learned through a little bit of Internet research, Disney gift cards can be redeemed for just about anything during a Disney World vacation--including food, hotel rooms, and park tickets. Since food and hotel rooms are going to take up a lot of our honeymoon budget, this seemed like a good use of any gift cards we might receive. Moreover, Disney gift cards don't expire and don't have any fees, so they're just as good as cash (except you can't be tempted to spend it elsewhere).

Due to the craziness of the holidays, some of our relatives didn't get a chance to send us any Christmas presents, and decided they wanted to contribute to the wedding instead (which, admittedly, is what I asked all of my family to do this year for Christmas). I suggested Disney gift cards as an alternative for these relatives, since the honeymoon registry does take a cut out of any gift, and close relatives have our address and can just send us things directly. For more distant relatives or friends, the honeymoon registry is still probably a good choice, because your best man/maid of honor/other family members can spread the link around easily and quickly.

Also, digital donations are pretty disappointing to open on Christmas day.

There are also some perks to buying Disney gift cards ourselves. Some stores let you buy gift cards at a discount, while our local Safeway (where we do all of our grocery shopping) occasionally runs a special where the purchase of gift cards nets you 5X reward points toward gas rewards. Seeing as how, when I fill up my tank, gas rewards have saved me upwards of $20 on the whole tank, that's a sizeable percentage of a gift card's value recovered right away. That doesn't even take into account the extra rewards points I'll earn on my credit card, which I wouldn't normally get just putting that money into our savings account. Of course, we have lots of non-Disney expenses coming up, so I wouldn't want to lock our entire wedding fund up in gift cards, but grabbing one or two here and there could be a nice way to chip at the mountain of expense instead of trying to blow it up all at once. I would say, though, that for anyone looking to do the honeymoon registry, Disney gift cards seem like they could be a nice alternative way to help pay for the honeymoon without going through a third party vendor.