Do you know what that’s the sound of? A registry gun!
I couldn’t resist the zebra print towels! // Personal photo
The only category left to tackle on the wedding website was Registry. Between college, moving to two states and living with Mr. PB for almost three years, I have accumulated a lot of home items. I always told myself that I’d put a Kitchenaid mixer on a wedding registry one day but Mr. PB gifted that to me our second Christmas together. A wedding registry intimidated me because I knew there aren’t a lot of items for us to put on it. The intimidation grew when I saw all of the suggestions on the web for the number of items to register for based on guest count – much more than I anticipated we could come up with.
With around 150 guests, that’s at least 120 items we should register for. // Source: It’s a Brides Life
We decided that we would do a traditional registry at a store, along with a honeymoon registry, like many other bloggers. The honeymoon registry would provide more options for our guests and to help make the honeymoon a bit more budget friendly.
After reading posts from many bloggers about the different honeymoon registries, I decided to sign us up for Honeyfund and pay the $45 for the premium site. By doing so, it gave the site a more professional and personal feel, which I feel will help those who are hesitant deviating from the traditional store registry. To find items to add, I scoured through different trip, restaurant review and attraction websites. Mr. PB even looked into some restaurants that he thought he would want to visit. When putting the items on our Honeyfund, I broke each item down into $20, $25 or $50 increments so people could contribute at varying levels. I also included a link to the place’s website (if available) and wrote up a blurb for each one.
A sample of our Honeyfund // Source: Screenshots from Honeyfund
I added the cost in the description to help people understand why we want six $50 Disneyland items – because the total cost is approximately $300. And yes, you read that right, our airfare has already been fulfilled by some amazing family members! We were able to get the tickets at a steal (less than $600 total for both round-trip tickets!). Tip: Honeyfund will email you when someone purchases something off of your registry. If you decide to do a Honeyfund and you want the element of surprise to be kept in tact, you should set up a rule in your email account so the emails redirect to a subfolder.
As for our traditional registries, we went with Target and Bed Bath and Beyond. At first, we only picked out about 30 items from the two stores combined because everything we looked at, I figured we already had – plates, silverware, serving dishes, towels. After discussing with my MOHs, I realized that maybe it would be a good idea to upgrade items we already have, such as matching silverware vs. a haphazard collection, glass platters vs. plastic, coordinating towels vs. mismatched ones. With this thinking, we were able to increase our registry eightfold.
Real, adult items – upgrades from our current collection // Source: Screenshots from Bed Bath and Beyond and Target
Being the math and numbers lover I not so secretly am, I compared the number of items on our traditional registries and Honeyfund to the above chart. The result?
Our registry by the numbers // Personal Photo
So what did I deduce from this comparison? We registered for more items than suggested but the cost of those items is half the suggested value. What does this mean? Nothing, really. We registered for what we would like and/or need and didn’t follow any rules. Just another example of taking suggestions as just that, suggestions, not rules to live by.
How did you decide what to register for? Did you find a resource that was helpful when you made your registry?