Rich and I lived together before getting married. And, as I've mentioned, we're sorta old (32 and 34 on our wedding day). My point in this? We have stuff. Plenty of stuff. Too much stuff already for the one bedroom condo we inhabit along with our adorable cat Stella. We also try not to be huge consumers of stuff. We didn't want all new stuff just because we could. We have perfectly good stuff and we're happy with it. (If you're like us and have similar feelings about stuff, I highly recommend George Carlin's bit on "stuff". It's one of my favorites.)
So the idea of registering for more stuff made us uncomfortable. Instead, we opted for a honeymoon registry. For the not-too-expensive price of 7%, one of various companies will help you create a wedding registry that allows guests to buy various activities for your honeymoon - airfare, dinner out, swimming with sharks (good to keep an eye on whichever guest selects this gift!). We chose one that worked for us, filled it up with all sorts of fun activities for our New Zealand adventure honeymoon, set up a website and we were done. It was perfect for us. Plus, it turned out that we only ended up getting about one-third of our gifts through the registry. Almost everyone else gave us cash. This actually worked out better because we didn't lose out on the 7% fee of going through the registry.
Some people will be confused - and concerned - by this. Multiple caring people in my life warned me that "people want to give you a THING" and that our honeymoon registry would make guests uncomfortable. And we figured, so be it. If a guest feels uncomfortable with our registry, they're welcome to give us whatever they're comfortable with. We did not cave on what we wanted and I'm so glad. We paid for most of our wedding ourselves and would not have been able to afford our great honeymoon without the honeymoon registry. We would have had every kitchen gadget in the world, 8 sets of sheets and 27 towels with no place to store it all and no honeymoon. That's not what we wanted and we're so glad we didn't acquiesce.
The one concession I did make was for my shower. We went to Crate & Barrel on a Saturday afternoon and clicked the fancy wand on all sorts of fun stuff that we wanted, but didn't have or really need. My Maid of Honor (MOH) and bridesmaids ended up using it to plan a fun dining/entertaining themed shower. I got the tablecloth, serving dishes, whoopie pie pans (!!) we registered for and then personalized recipes from each shower guests which fit neatly in a cute (green!) recipe book. Rich and I love to entertain and host dinner parties and now we have all sorts of new menu ideas to put together thanks to this fun shower and registry. We were able to still do things our way, help make everyone else feel more comfortable, and got to enjoy a few welcome surprises as well.
All of that said, we actually only got two wedding gifts that were not on our registry. Both were from the phenomenal glass studio of Simon Pearce. One of my favorite Vermont company, they have absolutely beautiful decorative and useful serving pieces. My wonderful MOH and her husband got us an incredible centerpiece bowl engraved with our names and wedding dates. As my friends (including my MOH) know, I am never one to go "off-registry" for people's gifts. But in this instance, I'm so glad both couples did. We love our special gifts from them and both are now displayed in our home.
Note: If the name "Pearce" sounds familiar, you may know Simon's talented son Kevin who was involved in a horrific ski accident a couple of years ago. You can read about the accident and the family here and see Kevin's amazing journey here.
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