Wedding Blog

From the get-go, the Dude and I knew we didn’t want a traditional registry. We’ve been living together for over three years at this point. We have everything we need. Not to mention, we just bought a house last October, so we’re pretty settled where we are and with everything we’ve accumulated for ourselves over the years.

Source

I didn’t want to forgo the registry entirely because people like to give gifts at weddings, especially family and close friends.

A friend of mine suggested we do a honeymoon registry. There are free sites out there (like the one I chose, Honeyfund.com), that allow you to select different “items” you want, such as airfare, hotel stays, meals, etc. and divide them into smaller chunks that your guests can afford. For example, our hotel stay in Mykonos, one of the places we plan on visiting in Greece*, is split into 20 $100 pieces. Guests can look at your registry, select one or more items, then choose to mail you a check or pay with a credit card or bank account through Paypal. It works for almost anyone (except maybe some older guests who don’t have access to the internet). Mrs. Perfume blogged about her Honeyfund a few months ago.

Here’s a little snippet from our registry, so you get an idea.

The best thing about it is that we don’t have to do everything exactly the way it is on our registry. Once we figure out how much money we have to work with, we can pick and choose the things that are most important to us. Most likely we won’t splurge on such expensive hotels while in Greece–we’ll opt for budget hotels or hostels, depending on how adventurous we’re feeling!

In addition to our Honeyfund, we also chose to select a charity that guests can donate to instead. More on our charity, and why we picked it later.

Now I know that we will have some guests at our wedding who are more traditionally minded. And without a classic registry full of kitchen and home items to choose from, I’m worried we’ll wind up with some wackily atrocious gifts that we’ll have no use for and can’t return because there is no gift receipt. Stuff like this. Or this. Or this. (The last one looks like it might try to kill me in my sleep!)

I know about the etiquette of not including your registry information in your invitations. I think I’ve got it covered—I included our wedding website information in our save-the-dates. From the wedding website, there will be a link to our Honeyfund and our charity. I don’t plan on including the wedding website information again in the invitations. Instead, I will try to get my mom and the Dude’s mom to spread the word about our online registries to all interested parties who may have neglected to check out our website after receiving their save-the-dates.

As for those who really want to buy us a physical wedding gift, I guess there is nothing we can do about that.

Are you doing an alternative registry? How are you structuring it so that people who don’t use the internet can find out information about it?

*I’ll follow up with more details about our honeymoon soon.