Mr. Jaguar and I have been struggling with the gifts part of our wedding. I know that talking about presents can sometimes be a bit taboo, but it’s something that we never realised would be so difficult to figure out. I thought it might be beneficial to post about it on the ‘Bee, in case other brides find themselves having similar obstacles, too. (Though of course, this could just be me.)
I always thought gifts were supposed to be the fun side of the wedding. You do all this planning, you spend all this time, energy and money to throw a party that both you and your guests will love, and the gifts are just the icing on top of the proverbial wedding cake. And that’s true, for the most part—it really is. Picking and choosing a wedding gift is one of my favourite parts of going to other people’s big day; it means I get to set them up with something that I’ve chosen for them, even if it is out of a list of items. It’s fun!
Now here’s where I add in a little disclaimer: I am lucky to be marrying into a wonderful family who have always, always been amazing.
They would do anything for their kids, and they’ve been so supportive of Mr. Jaguar and me for as long as I can remember. The only issues we’ve had with them have been in regards to traditions and etiquette at weddings. If you’ve followed any of my older blogs, you might remember a post I wrote in the early days where I was struggling about merging a traditional wedding with some modern planning, and my future in-laws just didn’t understand. This was what I wrote about their thoughts on the wedding registry:
Not done on Mr. Jaguar’s side of the family. Say what? Again, we’ve been told that the “done thing” is to just let the parents on either side know what you’re looking for, without naming specific brands or prices, so that people don’t judge you on what you’re putting on your registry.
You guys, we spent weeks trying to decide what to do in lieu of a registry. We didn’t like the idea of just giving ‘items’ to people as a guide, because there would be no way of tracking who’d bought what, or what kind/colour/type of item we’d prefer … it just seemed messy. Also, if we were going to the trouble of creating a specific list like that, wouldn’t that be exactly the same as creating a gift registry anyway? Mr. Jaguar brought up a good point, in that since we’re building a home this year, we really don’t need anything right now, but wouldn’t it be cool to get gift vouchers as a present? They can be any value, they can usually be spent within a year, and they could go towards something we really need/want at a later date. I immediately got on board with this idea, because um, IKEA, hello? Home furnisher’s dream! My parents loved the idea, and were fine with just casually spreading the word, but when we broached it with the in-laws, they hated it. And since the majority of our guests are from that side of the family, we knew that if Mr. Jaguar’s parents weren’t comfortable mentioning our preferences to people, we’d be left stranded once again.
So, what’s a couple to do? We just went ahead and created a freaking registry already. Now, my North American Bees, you have NO idea how lucky you are to have so many great stores at your disposal that do registries. In Australia, there are a few online ones, but really, only one traditional department store that offers the service: Myer. We hit up our local store this past weekend, and got busy with the scanning.
The experience was the same as most, I would imagine. We were handed a scanner and sent off into the store to go zap-happy on the things we wanted the most.
What was a bit irritating though, was not being able to zap anything on clearance. The store requests that you don’t do this, as the chances of the item still being available by your wedding date is slim-to-none. Unfortunately, most of the decorative and home furnishing items were on sale while we were visiting, so we hardly got to put any of those things on our registry. I’d like to go back on another day and see if we could add a few more low-priced items from that range on there, just for some more variety.
We had fun doing it, though I’ll admit: it was a tad overwhelming. Myer might be the only store that does in-person registries in Sydney, but it’s an expensive department store, and not one that we regularly shop in. It was hard looking at pricing and trying not to freak out about how much things were, though I think we did a good job of putting a good range of items on there. (The most expensive thing on our list? A set of cutting knives, at around $200.) I wish I’d taken more pictures during our experience, but in truth, it was pretty exhausting. Mr. Jaguar got bored after getting through the bedding and bathroom section, so we kept things nice and simple from then on. I did get really excited about putting some separate items from this set on our registry, though:
The birdies! The black and white! This is SO me, seriously. I’m crossing fingers and toes that somebody can snap these up from the registry, or else I’ll be buying them for us after the wedding. 
As for telling the future in-laws, well, we haven’t done that yet. At the end of the day, we needed to make the choice for our wedding, so I’m hoping that they’ll understand and not take it to heart.
How was your gift-registry experience?
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