Traditionally, a wedding registry has been a way for soon-to-be married couples to furnish the home they will share after the wedding. But thanks to modern times, it’s common now that couples are already living together and have combined their home furnishings and accessories long before the big day. Soooo… What do you register for if you have everything?
My husband and I went through this because we had been living together for 4 years by the time we got married. We had an already well-established home full of furnishings, kitchen gadgets, and stuff we probably didn’t need anyways. As soon as we announced our engagement, we got bombarded with the dreaded question “Where are you registered at?”, which lead us to think… “What the heck are we supposed to ask for?”
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We’ve both been married before, but neither of us had registered anywhere for gifts. We didn’t even know what was okay to ask for. We kind of knew that there were some things we wanted, and some items we had put off buying, but were they even appropriate!?
Thanks goodness for Amazon’s Wedding Registry. It was our first stop in seeing what sort of items other couples were asking for, and what was fitting – from Amazon’s top picks to featured collections of items we might add to our own list. It was such a big help in determining what was normal, and it sparked some ideas for sure!
It’s our experience that this is the first place you should register for (more ideas later!) and the easiest place to shop around for some useful wedding registry ideas.
Decide what’s right for you
We spent a lot of time cruising around Amazon getting some excellent wedding registry ideas. I’m thankful that it’s such an easy to use tool that’s available these days – especially since many of our out of town guests wouldn’t be able to make it and shipping from Amazon is super easy (and free with Prime!).
But as we were going through lists of featured items, we started questioning whether these items were right for us. Based on our experience, here are some helpful tips for choosing what to register for:
Keep your own Wants and Values in Mind
We don’t need fine China. We will never use fine China. It made zero sense to us to ask then for fine China. This is one of those traditional items that we felt pressured to include in our list. Isn’t this what people ask for? But the idea of people spending money on stuff that I knew we wouldn’t use really bugged me.
Don’t cave. This is YOUR registry. You really can add (or not add!) whatever suits you.
We liked these…
Because we had most of what we really needed, we enjoyed getting gift cards, home decor, and special keepsakes.
Put off making non-emergency purchases
Jeremy and I realized that there were things that we could use, kind of needed eventually, but weren’t immediately important. We added those things to our Amazon registry. It helped us add a variety of gift ideas to our registry in a range of price points so that there was a little something that every guest could consider and afford to buy.
Consider gifts fitting of your lifestyle
Totally going back to the point about keeping your own wants and values in mind here: Ask for gifts that you and your spouse-to-be will enjoy. You aren’t limited to things like silverware, place settings, and blenders (although to be fair, this one we got is really nice). You can ask for whatever you enjoy whether that’s gift cards to restaurants, fitness gear so you can get healthy and live a long life together, or cute frames for all of the pictures you’ll have of your special day.
Replace or Upgrade items
Maybe you already had a slow cooker when you met that fit enough food for one, and you’ve just been making due… Because why spend the money to buy what you already have? Your wedding is the perfect time to celebrate your need for a bigger slow cooker, fitting for two! Consider adding items to your list to replace those that are outdated, worn out, or better suited for your growing family.
We needed some upgrades
Between his bachelor junk, my dollar store kitchen gadgets, and stuff that was just not meant for a combined household, we needed a few upgrades…
Get the gift of experiences
We loved this option for our guests, because instead of buying us a physical gift, they could give the gift of an experience. For us, that was things like:
- Contributing to our wedding reception
- Dinner for two
- A bottle of champagne
- Our honeymoon suite for a night
- Room service
- Admission to the hot springs we wanted to check out
But it can really be anything, so long as it’s an experience for you as a couple to enjoy! I loved these gifts because they made our honeymoon really fun and special, like the evening we spent in our hotel room with gourmet pizza (thanks friends!). Um, yes… we brought the Nintendo Switch. We’re those people!
Register at the best places
There’s a bunch of places that you can register for wedding gifts, but if you really have everything you need, or your values just don’t call for you registering somewhere super swanky, or you have a lot of friends and family from out of town who may not be able to attend your wedding, here’s my favorites for you:
Amazon
I mean, who doesn’t shop at Amazon!? Not only is everything in one place (seriously, everything), it’s easy to sign up for a wedding registry and begin your search for the best items for your registry. Of course there’s the free shipping (how I ever lived with Prime, I’ll never know), but there’s a ton of other benefits for both you and your gift givers:
- Everything in one place – Makes it easy for you to add gifts, and even easier for guests to buy!
- 180 Day Returns – Wrong color? Wrong size? Don’t like it as much as you thought you did? No problem. Send it back within 180 days of its purchase.
- Group Gifting – Don’t be scared to add larger, more expensive items! Thanks to group gifting, your friends and family can work together to get you what you need the most.
- Never miss a Thank You – Amazon keeps track of who purchased what, so you can thank them after the big day! (Don’t forget to buy thank you cards!)
Honeyfund
This was such a great experience for us and our guests! They really appreciated being able to contribute to our experiences instead of trying to figure out what item on our other registries they should buy. I highly recommend Honeyfund if you want to offer this as an option to your guests. It’s especially nice for those who can’t attend your wedding to hand you money directly.
Honeyfund has several partners that they work with, including Amazon, Bed Bath & Beyond, Wayfair, Home Depot, Pottery Barn, Kohl’s and others. You can register at those places and connect them to your Honeyfund account so that it’s all in one place.
Zola
This is a really neat option if you’d like to take advantage of the free wedding website that they offer along with your registry. Okay, so it isn’t up to my standards (fun fact: this blog was actually once our wedding website that I built myself), but it’s nice as far as a free website all about your special day goes.
Much like Amazon, Zola tries to be a one stop shop for your wedding registry. In a lot of ways, it combines Amazon and Honeyfund into a super registry since you can actually add Amazon products to your Zola registry (in addition to the thousands of gift options already listed there), as well as give your guests the option to contribute to experiences.
Your turn!
What’s on the top of your wedding registry list? Comment below because I’d love to hear your ideas!
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