 |
| Realities of Wedding Registries |
|
|
Michael Cottam, co-founder of TheBigDay,
offers his insights on how to create wedding registry items that have meaning for your wedding guests as well as for you, the couple.
|
|
|
Whether you create a registry at TheBigDay or elsewhere, I recommend you take just a few minutes to read what I've got to say below.
The choices you give your wedding guests in terms of gifts will affect how they feel about the gift-giving and your wedding. And while
you're the centerpiece of your wedding, it's not only about you...else you wouldn't have invited all those people :-)
| Reality of the wedding gifts |
|
No matter who you are or how much money you make, your wedding guests are going to buy you wedding gifts.
Not only is it traditional, but it's a way for them to show their love for you and help you celebrate your wedding,
starting your new life together off with something memorable. You're gonna get wedding gifts, and
even though it's not polite to ask for gifts, you do need to make it easy for the guests to get you something
that means something to you...which means creating a registry and gracefully and subtlely letting your guests know how
to find your registry.
A wedding gift is an important gift for the gift-giver: not only does it tend to be more expensive than gifts
for other occasions, it's also expressing a very personal and emotional feeling for you and your new life together.
What they give you is an expression of how they feel about you. If your registry is full of practical
but "cold" gift items, your guests aren't going find something that expresses their feelings for you.
Remember this: a wedding gift needs to "work" for the gift-giver as well as for you, the couple.
| Create specific, meaningful items |
|
Consider the following two registry items:- $75 toward your honeymoon
- Waikiki sunset catamaran sail for two
While both might cost the guest $75, there's a HUGE difference between the two! The first one
says "we're willing to spend $75 on your wedding gift", while the second says "we'd like to give you
this particular romantic experience to celebrate your wedding". Either way, of course, you get $75 to
help you have a great honeymoon, but for the wedding guest, it's a much more personal and rewarding
thing to give you the sunset sail.
And when you get back, you'll undoubtedly take a picture of the two of you on the boat and include it in
your thank-you note to them...so they'll see you're smiling sunburnt faces and know you really enjoyed
their specific gift.
Make sure you have lots of gift items in the $10 to $25 range. It's not just for those guests
who are only spending $10 to $25! We've found that many wedding guests will buy one big item from
a registry, and add on a little "fun" item that's not much money but is more fun and romantic than the
main item they're buying. "Umbrella drinks at the beach bar" is a classic example.
So: make sure you've
got plenty of the little fun items...and for ideas,
check some of our real couples' registries.
Of course your airfare and your hotel are going to make up a big chunk of your honeymoon expenses.
Problem is, they're not as romantic to give as things like breakfast in bed, a massage, or dinner
at a beachside restaurant...so don't expect most of your wedding guests to contribute to these
items.
Add them to your registry, however...and break them down into gift-sized chunks,
e.g. 500 miles of airfare (perhaps 20 items @ $75 each), or
One night in our overwater bungalow (perhaps 7 items at $125 each).
What we see happen regularly is that someone (parents and grandparents, usually) will spend
a major amount on your wedding gift, and will buy all 20 (or 7) of the item...and then buy
another little fun item to add a little romance to their big practical gift.
I strongly recommend keeping your registry items at the low end of the price range. If you've got
a lot of items priced at $75 to $150, you're effectively telling your guests you expect most of them
to spend that much on your gift. It doesn't matter that they probably will spend that much
(the average we see on our registries is about $115 per gift)...it's the message you're sending. And,
you're probably going to have a number of guests who really can only afford $25 or $40...who love you
just as much! Don't make them feel bad by having most of the items on your registry priced outside their price range.
Another thing: you don't necessarily have to ask for ALL the money! The overwater bungalow in our
previous example isn't going to be $125/night (more like $325/night...so if you find one for $125/night, BOOK IT! :-)
But give your guests the opportunity to buy a big chunk of it as their gift to you. Just make sure that
you make the gift item relate to a real, specific part of your honeymoon (e.g. "one night"). They'll want to
give you something specific, not a dollar amount toward something.
| Register for what you really want |
|
Make sure you only put things on your registry that you really want, or things you really want to do.
This applies to registries for "things" as well as your honeymoon. It's really not right for you
to ask a guest to buy you something, then return it and just keep the cash...similarly, it's not
right to have Uncle Tim and Aunt Mary buy you the Dolphin Experience then not go. Their gift to you
was the experience, not the cash. But what if the gift is broken down into several items, and not
all are bought? that brings us to the next question...
Sometimes you'll have a gift that you've broken down into several items, and not all get bought. Here's
an example: Helicopter tour of Kauai...you might have 2 items, each one representing
one of your tickets for the ride. (A helicopter ride tends to be expensive, so by breaking it into one ticket
for each of you, you make more of a proper gift-sized item for someone to buy.)
Now what if only 1 ticket is bought? You've got two choices: either you pay for the other ticket yourself
(if you can afford it), or you use the cash for something else similar.
If you use the cash for something else, you owe it to your wedding guest to tell them the truth in your thank-you
note. Tell them that you appreciate their generous gift, but decided to use it for a different experience that appealed
to you more once you
arrived at your honeymoon destination (maybe use it for a less expensive adventure like a snorkel trip). I'm not
"Miss Manners", but I think if you get really stuck and can't afford to cover the other ticket yourself, this is probably
a much more graceful way to deal with the situation than to say "too bad nobody bought the other ticket", as they may
interpret this as saying they should have bought both...which isn't fair to them.
| Show them you loved their gift |
|
While you're on your trip, make sure you take pictures of yourselves enjoying each experience that was bought for you
on your registry. If you can't take a picture exactly of the two of you (let's say it's a beachside massage), take
a picture related to the activity (perhaps the view from the massage tent by the beach). But this isn't just
for your honeymoon photo album...
Your wedding guest bought you something personal, romantic, and specific...complete the circle by
showing them how beautiful, romantic, and memorable it really was for you with a photo.
With each hand-written thank-you note, include a photo related to the gift that your guest bought.
Remember, it's not that the guest really wants to be thanked (although they will, a bit!)--what's most
important is that they know that their gift to you really meant something to you. A photo of you two enjoying
their gift helps tell them exactly that.
For more helpful ideas for your registry, we suggest the following:
|
|
