Exactly what is a "small" registry?

melbenso

Some background: FI and I have lived together for several years.  We have most things we need for our household and are saving to buy a house.  Because of this, and so as not to be rude by asking for cash or starting some terrible honeyfund, our plan is to create a small registry and when asked tell people that we have said small registry at X and are also saving to buy a house.  I have declined the two showers that were offered to me (because we have most of what we need and would really prefer money towards the house) and we are just now working on finishing up our registry with a little over 3 months to go until our wedding.  We will be inviting 150 people to the wedding, but about 20 of those we already know will not be able to attend because of travel costs. 

Our registry, as it stands now, has just over 50 separate items on it (with some multiples requested of some specific items like towels and dishes - so about 70 individual things total). About 70% of the items are $50 or less.  Only 3 items are more than $100 and none are over $200. So, it is possible that we will receive multiple items from the same guest. Does this seem like a good sized registry for what we are trying to do? 

AprilH81

There is no rule on what is "small" but I would think yours is okay for what you are trying to do.  As long as you would be happy getting anything on the registry and you aren't putting stuff on there to get to a certain number you are fine.

melbenso

Yep.  It's all stuff we want.  Though I do wish you had the option to rank things on a registry, because while a lot of it is stuff we really want/need, a few items fell into the "this would be cool, so what the heck" category.

AprilH81

melbenso said:

Yep.  It's all stuff we want.  Though I do wish you had the option to rank things on a registry, because while a lot of it is stuff we really want/need, a few items fell into the "this would be cool, so what the heck" category.

Crate and Barrel has a "love it" option where you can select 5 items at a time to indicate what you guys REALLY want.  Once it is bought you can select another item.

melbenso

Sadly, our registry does not.

photokitty

We did not register - anywhere. I would leave to "cool to have items" off for now and only add them if items left on the registry start to get low.

For our wedding the gifts broke down like this: 75% cash or check, 20% gift cards and 5% random and lovingly selected physical gifts.  :-)  GL!

csuave

 

photokitty said:

We did not register - anywhere. I would leave to "cool to have items" off for now and only add them if items left on the registry start to get low.

For our wedding the gifts broke down like this: 75% cash or check, 20% gift cards and 5% random and lovingly selected physical gifts.  :-)  GL!

I agree with this.  Either add the "cool" items if other stuff is bought or just leave them off entirely.  A small registry can be as small as you want.  People may choose to get you gift cards for the place you registered.  By leaving the "cool" items off you will be guaranteed to at least have something you can use the gift cards for.  Unless you registered some place where you will have no problem spending gift cards like they are cash, then nbd.

We registered for about 50 things and had one shower with about 25 people invited.  After the shower we had about 5 things left on the registry.  4 were bought as wedding gifts and I thought I would be using our BBB gift card (wedding gift) to get the last thing.....but when we got back from our HM it was off the registry.  Someone (not invited) from work searched for our regsitry and bought it for us.

When we got down to only having 5 things left on the registry we starting telling people that asked us where we were registered that we didn't really have a registry because we focusing on getting our new house into shape.