Only told people about one registry :/

princessleia22

So, we set up wedding registries at Amazon, Target, and Bed Bath & Beyond.  The majority of our registry items were at Amazon & Target.  My mom & MOH are throwing me a shower and sent out invites last week. They only included the registry info for BB&B in the invites. The reason: BB&B printed registry cards for her at the store. She would have had to order them online or print them herself for Target or Amazon. I had even told them all the places we were registered and even provided registry numbers and links to online registries!  Really? How hard is it to write "Bride and Groom are registered at Amazon.com, Target, and Bed Bath & Beyond" on a slip of paper to include in the invite? 

So, now my dilemma is do we try to find items from BB&B to replace the items we registered for at the other places, since that is likely where all our gifts will come from? We can't do that for everything because BB&B doesn't carry everything and some items we prefer the option at other store. Or do we just assume that people may check other stores on their own and find the registries? Currently it looks like there will be about 40-50 people at shower.  We currently only have 14 items on our BB&B registry. We do have all our registry info also on our wedding website, so some people may think to find it there, but we've found that not many people think to check our website for anything and most forget we even have it, so I'm not really counting on that. The other option is to just leave it be, maybe people will find other registries, maybe they won't.  If not, maybe they will give gift cards or cash instead, which we are hoping for anyway since shower is being held in my home town, 2,000 miles away from where I currently live, so I'll have to figure out how to get any gifts back home.

I think I'm just kind of frustrated thinking we wasted our time making the registries if they aren't even telling people where we registered. We really didn't have many items on any of them and actually struggled to figure out what to include on them (mostly upgrades of current items we have/use). And, it seems rude to tell people we have only 1 registry, which includes 1/3 number of items as shower guests, and most of the items are under $20 with a few items over $100 (we had much better cost variation on other registries).  I don't want people to think that we were unreasonable with our registry or make things difficult for them.

tortoisebride

You need to stay out of it entirely. It'll come off as very very rude to tell people where to buy you presents. Make sure your immediate family knows where you're registered and they'll pass the word if people ask. 

Add stuff to your BB&B list if you're concerned about people not having enough choices. 

Don't stress about this. It's not your fault, and anything you try to do to "fix" it will make you look rude.

tammym1001

My MOH completely forgot to put registry information in my shower invites at all. Some people asked her when they called to RSVP and other people asked me. I think when people see you have so few items on your BBB registry they are probably going to start asking around. It might be a good idea if you can add some of the other things at BBB though just because I think it will look strange that you have so few items and they may all get bought pretty quickly. If people don't know you're registered anywhere else they may just go off registry.

princessleia22

Oh, I have no intentions of contacting people or telling anyone directly about the other registries.  And honestly, we are perfectly happy if we get no gifts whatsoever, so we certainly don't want to push the "give me presents" image.  As far as telling immediate family, that's the problem... we told them where we registered and they passed on incomplete/wrong info.  So, now the only registry people will likely see seems rather inconsiderate to the guests, since it was our 3rd choice and not primary registry.  In combination with the other registries, this one is fine, but not by itself.

I just know that I would certainly side-eye it if I got a shower invite and the only registry included had very few items, all of which were really cheap or really expensive. I could easily see a couple people buying several of the $10-20 items quickly, which is most of the list, leaving $100+ items for everyone else.  There currently aren't any items in the mid-range price at all, which is probably where most people would want to buy from.

We can probably move some items over here from other registries.  But I don't want to add a bunch of unwanted items to fill the price range gap and end up with a bunch of store credit for a store we don't really shop at much. I'm just not sure if I should try to add a bunch of items to this registry now or just let it be.

princessleia22

tammym1001 said:

My MOH completely forgot to put registry information in my shower invites at all. Some people asked her when they called to RSVP and other people asked me. I think when people see you have so few items on your BBB registry they are probably going to start asking around. It might be a good idea if you can add some of the other things at BBB though just because I think it will look strange that you have so few items and they may all get bought pretty quickly. If people don't know you're registered anywhere else they may just go off registry.

At least putting no registry info leads people to ask. If I saw one registry included, I would probably assume that's the only place they registered and not think to ask.  And if they do ask mom or MOH, they may just tell them BB&B and still not tell people about the others.

And I worry about people buying off registry.  FI and I have very particular styles.  Most of the people at my shower are relatives that I haven't seen or really talked to in nearly 10 years.  And since FI and I are older, been out of parents homes for 15-20 years, and have been living together for 5 years, we really don't need a lot of the typical shower items. Nor do we have space for many large items, like larger kitchen appliances.  Even if people do buy off registry, it's nice to at least have a registry that they could look at to get an idea of type of things we like.

00kim00

A similar situation happened to us. We're registered at Macy's and BBB. Most of the stuff is at Macy's, and somehow the most expensive stuff ended up at BBB. We have 2/3 of our registry is under $25, and less than 5 items are over $100, but some are way over (Kitchenaid mixer, pots and pans set). Our BBB registry was much smaller, had only 2 things under $60 and everything we registered for over $100.

The first thing I did was look at my Macy's registry and move everything I could to BBB if it was the same (both have Fiestaware dishes, for example) or comparable (I have no brand loyalty for salad spinners). And some people still asked me directly where we're registered, and I told them Macy's with some at BBB, too.  Sometimes it then came up in the conversation that they were only told BBB when they got the invite, then that person sometimes took it upon herself to spread the word that there's another registry. But we still ended up with most things from BBB and a lot of BBB gift cards (but no Macy's gift cards).

theartistformerlyknownas

Does BBB have the little section at the top where you can put a note? Can you write "also registered at Target and Amazon" there? 

Some people may still ask or Google though, especially since the BBB registry is so small. Perhaps your mom/MOH can let people know about the other two when they call to RSVP.

photokitty

FWIW - I would search online and find all 3 of your registries. I hate those little cards and throw them out immediately.

This is why we always DIY shower invites in my family and print the registry info directly on the invite when we host a shower.

bananasplit472001

Do you have a wedding website? If you made one put the other registries there.  If you did not I would add similar or the same items to your BBB registry and delete them from the other registries.

princessleia22

I actually had one person mention yesterday that I have "expensive taste" after looking at my registry.  The BBB registry had all items around $100 (I think we had 6-8 items).  Target registry had mostly items in $10-30 price range (around 20 items).  Amazon had items mostly around $50 (around 15 items). So if they just looked at BBB registry, it would certainly seem that we have expensive taste, since that one had all the more expensive items.  I made sure to notify that person of the other registries. Overall we had good balance of prices, but each registry in itself had only one pricing group, which was probably bad to do (it was done unintentionally).

Last night I revised all registries to move things around. We now have 3/4 of the items on BBB registry, with a variety of all price ranges. I also tried to balance the other registries so none of them are completely on one end of price range, like we previously had.

We do have a wedding website, but most of our guests seem to forget we have it or don't think to check there. But, the last page on our website lists our registries along with direct links to them.  On there we also list a couple charities that are very meaningful to FI and I that we donate to regularly and we put a request for donations to them in lieu of gifts to us.