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Registry and Gift Forum
Knottie2127464
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Where to register? how far in advance? And are money options tacky?
So I have a lot of questions about registries!
1) Where are some good places to register? I have heard mixed feelings about some stores (Kohls, Amazon, BB&B) and wanted to hear opinions!
2) When do I need to finish my registry? I have been told as early as when you send the save-the-dates to as late as sending the wedding invites
3) How do you feel or have you ever done the money option gifts? I have seen collections for other things such as a honeymoon fund. I am more interested in a fund for buying our first house or renting a place for ourselves. Is that tacky? does it work?
Thank you in advance for all the advice!! Much appreciated!
1) Where are some good places to register? I have heard mixed feelings about some stores (Kohls, Amazon, BB&B) and wanted to hear opinions!
2) When do I need to finish my registry? I have been told as early as when you send the save-the-dates to as late as sending the wedding invites
3) How do you feel or have you ever done the money option gifts? I have seen collections for other things such as a honeymoon fund. I am more interested in a fund for buying our first house or renting a place for ourselves. Is that tacky? does it work?
Thank you in advance for all the advice!! Much appreciated!
This discussion has been closed.
Re: Where to register? how far in advance? And are money options tacky?
Do not, for the love of all that is holy, sign up for a cash registry. People will give you cash. Everybody knows that cash always comes in handy. Why, oh why, would you give a percentage of your gift to a 3rd party website to write you a check? That's all they're doing, you know? Taking money from your guests, scraping a percentage off the top, and giving the remainder to you in a lump sum check. You can just accept the cash and checks yourself without the middleman and keep your entire gift instead of a percentage of it.
Crate and Barrel was my favorite place to DO the registry at, as I love their products. My shower was all Crate and Barrel items and I also received around $500 in gift cards which made it nice to finish out my dishes so we have a full set. I also did all of mine online, never stepped foot in a store.
I also found it nice to get my registry done early, and just go in later and maintain it. You'll get busier in the 6 months or so before the wedding so it's nice to have something checked off the list. Just have to maintain to remove things that might get discontinued or sold out, and add new things that may come up that look interesting, but that takes way less time than the initial set up.
And yes, as others have said, if you really just want cash, you just don't register or do one small one at one store/website. Don't do honeyfunds or straight up ask people for cash. Despite our 3 registries though, we still received plenty of cash gifts/gift cards.
We registered about 2 months into our 13 month engagement. You probably don't have to do it that early but it was one of the things I was looking forward to doing. (Although some members of FI's family were asking where I was registered about a week after we got engaged. Um, nowhere yet...) But as long as you are registered by the time shower invites go out you're fine. And you can always go online and modify. I suggest you start early because it may take more time than you think. FI and I spent almost 2 hours picking out everyday plates and china, then ended up changing both patterns at our next appointment haha. We ended up going to 2 appointments at BB&B and one at Macy's, and still added a bunch of stuff online after.
Yes, cash registries and honeyfunds are considered tacky. People will take the hint and give you cash if you don't register for a lot of stuff. When you register at Macy's they automatically set you up with a "dream fund" where people can donate toward a Macy's gift card, the idea being that you will use the money on your registry items. We went ahead and removed that option from our registry.
The downside to registering early has been that we have had to constantly update things that have been discontinued (china, flatware, linens, everyday dishes)...
We ended up deleting the Macy's registry about 24 hours after we registered. The sales lady only cared about getting us a macy's card. She wouldn't take polite no's for an answer. I literally had to tell her after the 4th suggestion of card, "Listen, neither of us want to hurt our credit with applying/opening a new card. It will decrease our average age of accounts, and show up as a hard inquiry. We don't shop here enough for it to make up for the damage to our credit scores." We realized what we had registered for was available on Amazon at a better price, so we added those and deleted Macy's. Don't get me wrong, Macy's has some great benefits, but it just wasn't for us.
The best advice when deciding if/where to register, I could give is to do your research. What is close to your guests? Will most of your guests go to the physical store or do it online? Does the store offer a completion discount or other benefits? Is there a loyalty program (BB&B coupons, Macy's card discount, Prime shipping)? Do they accept returns easily? Hopefully, you will be able to figure out what works best for you and your guests.
You can start whenever you like, but people will start to shop when your invitations and/or when your shower invitations go out. You can continue to edit, but you should have most of your registry up by the time any invitations go out.
Please don't do a money registry. You just register for money. Guests write a check to the company, the company takes a cut, and then you get the different. Outside of it being silly to give a company money for no reason, it's rude to register for cash.
Crate & Barrel holds really nice registry events where the store is closed to the public so you and your fiance can go around the store and register without it being super crowded. They also give you two free stemless wine glasses when you create your registry.
I will say that the Macy's registry was amazing after the fact because we were able to get 20% off of anything on our registry (even if you just add it to your registry right before you purchase) as a completion discount. I was able to use this on Cyber Monday to save a TON on the remaining china on our registry.
You should definitely at least start looking at china and everyday dishes early on, because it's so hard to decide! You should try to have the majority of your registry done by the time the shower invites go out.
The majority of the items on our registry are from BB&B. We attended a registry event they had, "Rock the Registry", where each couple has their own consultant, you get gift bags for attending, etc. They have the widest variety of inexpensive items we want, and the 20% off coupons that virtually everyone gets made it a no-brainer for us. The consultant was super pushy though. She kept trying to get us to register for things that were WAY too expensive and justifying it by saying, "it's not like YOU have to pay for it." Yes, we know, thank you. (We do have some bigger items, but we didn't pick expensive stuff for the hell of it.) We like how easy it is to view/edit the registry online.
Dillard's was a must for us. Most of our family is in Arkansas, and it's one of the only major department stores around. This is where we did our china and flatware, among other things. No complaints here so far!
Pottery Barn was a complete nightmare. We probably should have deleted this registry, but we've received a couple gifts from here already, and I love the duvet cover and everyday dishes we picked out. We spent about an hour registering in-store, only to find out that there was a glitch in their registry system that day (?) and everything was lost. We went online a few days later and re-added everything we could remember. Then about 5 weeks later, everything we had chosen in store showed up on the registry, meaning we were double registered for a lot of things. We went online and fixed it, but it took a while. And THEN, I happened to be playing with our registry a week before our first shower, and 75% of the items showed up as unavailable for purchase. I went in and spent an hour and a half with a consultant who ended up telling me, "sorry, I guess you're just unlucky." Thankfully, this turned out to be a glitch too. Two days later nearly all the items returned to the registry. (Sorry for the rant. I've been holding on to that one for a while
We registered early - about 7 months out. It hasn't been a problem so far. We picked mostly classic things that tend to stay in stock year round (nothing seasonal). We've had 2 or 3 things discontinued, but nothing crazy. We'll update it when we're closer to the wedding I'm sure.
PP's have it covered on "cash" registries. Just say no.