I've always said that it would be hard for me to register. What do I need that I haven't already bought myself? As a non-19-year-old, non-student, I've pretty much needed to provide for myself over the past several years.
Well, Monday night and Tuesday night, Murray and I spent some good quality time registering. I was surprised by how many things I needed! We registered from 7:00-9:00 on Monday and from 7:00-8:30 last night. We registered at Williams Sonoma and at Bed Bath and Beyond.
At Bed Bath and Beyond, they asked us how many people we'd be inviting. I don't actually know, but I've been making an uneducated guess of 400. It seems pretty accurate. Of course, a lot of those people are out of towners anyway. But still. That's roughly how many invites we'll send out. They said that we should register for about 800 items, then, giving our guests a good amount of choice in gift buying.
I was ready for the challenge.
I registered like I would shop. For example, when I found a $40 spring form pan at Williams Sonoma, I said, "Why would I ever need a $40 spring form pan?? There'll be something cheaper at Bed Bath & Beyond." Sure enough there was. We found a 3-pack for $9.99. That's the one we registered for. Just because people will be buying us gifts doesn't mean that they should waste their money on overpriced items. (El Senor pointed out that he owns the $40 Williams Sonoma spring form pan and claims that only things he makes in it turn out well.
And really, after an investment of three and a half hours, I really felt that we had accomplished our mission. We were successfully registered. We didn't register for nose hair clippers (though I threatened Murray that I'd add it to the registry) and we did register for lots of hangers. This made Murray exclaim, "For the poor people! This way, poor people who want to get us something can buy something they can afford!" I prefer to call them "students."
Today, I decided to go online to review our handiwork and see how close we came to 800 items. Here's the tally:
Williams Sonoma = 19 items (7 of which are cookbooks)
Bed Bath and Beyond = 34 items
Maybe if we'd brought along Murray's brother Steve, the Price is Right king, we would have done a lot better.
Does Apple have a registry?
Seriously, though, any registry advice you could send us, we'd appreciate. Clearly we're not doing it right.
20 comments:
We had the same quandary when we got married. We are both established adults that now had 2 (!) of everything we needed. We registered for a few things that we wanted to replace (cheap college dishes/utensils) and several things that were "wish list" items. Stuff that would be fun to have, but you really can't justify buying it. And, there will always be the guests that opt for cash or gift cards. Congrats again!
Register for a couple high priced items, i.e. the five quart Kitchen-Aid, so that people can go in together to get something great.
If I had just one registry tip it would be to also register someplace where you could buy groceries for a pantry stock pile.
I have been trying to come up with the perfect gift to put in your bike basket--the wedding gift that will only be for you. Now I have it! I will fill the bike basket with hangers. And I will wrap them with Murray's name on them.
Thank you, Cicada and Murray, for taking the time to register!
Also go to those store's websites and register. You'd be surprised how many things in the store aren't on the website, meaning out of towners can't buy them for you. So go on their website and register for more stuff to give long distance folks more options. And definitely register for things you don't want or need, but that people like to buy. Then you return them for cash. Trust me, it works. That $80 Foreman grill? Back to BB&B since I already had one. Genius.
And yes, register for some expensive things. You'd be surprised...
Aw, I love all of these posts about you guys getting married.
I would comment more, but for the past couple months my browser starts freaking out and realoading over and over again whenever I try to comment on peoples' blogs. Whatever.
Anyway, I wanted to tell you that I (finally!) went for gelato yesterday. I think I will eat nothing but gelato for the rest of my life.
AND, I think I'm buying a bike this weekend. I've been checking different places and I keep seeing ones that make me think of yours and your posts about it.
Ahhh... towels. Really beautiful expensive towels. And lovely lovely sheets. Because really, you can't have too many sets of sheets. We also got some fun things... we registered for board games, camping equipment, etc. Happy registering!
Register for fun stuff like games that you and Murray can do together. Another thing we did was register for exactly the same thing in more than one place. If we got more than one we took it back to the place where the item was more expensive. And someone did get us our $150 bedspread.
T'will be a glorious day when Apple makes a registry. I think you should make you own. I know I would.
My favorite place we registered was Macy's (which we did too late for our guests to know, but we still got serious perks). They give you a great discount for three months after the wedding, so we ended up getting all sorts of stuff there. The store at 106th S. had a very nice lady who, when we registered, gave my dad a giant discount on our china and he bought us a full set as a wedding present. But after the wedding we got our bedspread set, nice glass pitchers, a Cuisinart ice cream maker, towels, and a really nice silverware set all for 30% off the sale prices.
WalMart ended up being the best value for us though - we got some cool games and coolers and stuff, but we took most of the other stuff back and had free groceries for 3 months on our gift cards.
I have to tell you the smartest thing we did in our wedding plans. Both of our families wanted to be there for our opening presents, so we invited them over and opened 3 or 4 ourselves . . . but then we handed the opening job to them. We sat on the floor and wrote thank you cards as they opened the gifts. We had printed out a second set of labels from the invitations and had them handy - it was such a slick process. Plus, we had our thank yous completely finished and mailed within a week of our wedding, and our parents were tickled that they got to participate and that all their friends were properly thanked.
Seriously, add the expensive things you don't think anyone would buy. People will buy them, i.e., we got one of the fancy kitchen aid mixers (not to mention the fancy pasta maker-accessories that can go with it!).
Also realize that no matter how many things you have registered, some people will bring you something else from a completely different store (I think a few crock-pots have been recycled from couple to couple in my ward back home). We got four crock pots when we never registered for one.
And just count on people giving you gift certificates and money because they didn't want to spend the time, which is fine because those make the best presents anyway.
Count this as my present to you, 'cause you're not getting anything else from me.
Registry talk is like a foreign language to me. I think you should rename your blog something like, "I'm Getting Married and Now I Am Only Going to Post Things about That!"
Boo.
But secretly hooray.
Thanks everyone for the great advice! Keep it coming. This is helping out. El Senor suggests that I start watching Bridezilla so that I can get inspiration from other brides.
Limon. I have a word for you. In fact, I have several, you jerk.
1) My blog has always been about what's going on in my life. When I watched a lot of tv, it was about tv. When I got my new bike, it was about biking. When I was looking for a job, it was about getting jobs. Now, surprise surprise, all my time outside of work is spent on wedding preparation, so that's what I'm going to blog about.
2) On this page, only four posts out of ten are about marriage. That's not too bad, considering. If you're overwhelmed by my sunshiney bliss, please read the posts about goats, work, church, catching the clipper, wondering who the clipper is, and quesadillas.
You're a jerk.
But secretly, I thought your comment was funny. Miss you.
Secretly, my fear is that your blog will soon turn into one of those sweet, boring blogs that only feature pictures of young children at different events. Yawn. But I guess your children will probably be funny. I'm torn.
Love, in a nonthreatening way,
Jerk
Limon,
Secretly, I've worried about that, too, and promised myself that it won't happen. I've discussed it with my girlfriends and they think I can pull it off. Here's hoping...
Anyway, it'll be a couple years before children are in the picture, so in the meantime, I will try to edit out marital bliss that no one needs to read about and blog about interesting things. Like biking accidents, goats, television, and FIRE! Whoooooosh! I like it!
Love, in a hoping-to-keep-your-silent-readership way,
Cicada.
i call the hangers. everyone else back off.
Register at Target. They have tons of fun decorating stuff if nothing else. You know, mirrors, frames, etc. And you can always go clothes & grocery shopping with the cash cards people give you.
We had a hard time with this too, but I finally let go a little and started registering for things that are a little silly, and that I would never buy for myself, but that I really, really want anyway. Like 8 footed dessert dishes. They are now in my possession and they make me really happy. Did I need them? No. But someone bought them for me and they're great.
Also, I have 3 words for you: Crate and Barrel. People love buying stuff off of the Crate and Barrel registry. One friend chided me for not registering there so I put about 7 things on that registry because she really wanted to buy me something there. I got nearly all of the items at my shower. It's apparently the magical registry location. Makes me sort of wish I had gone for the fancy C&B dishes.
You need to add the Cuisinart Egg Cooker to your registry. Seriously. It's awesome.
Everyone's right about finding some pricey items for the group gifts. Back in the day, I registered for a Crate & Barrel fondue set never thinking anyone would shell out over $200 for something so useless. I ended up with two.
I gotta agree with the yummy towels (go for the bath sheet size) and a really high thread count for sheets.
Congrats!
Does Apple have a registry?
Amazon.com does. (And you can get Apple stuff there, right?)
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