Wanna talk registries

[TheDisneyGirl02]

You sound like a wonderful and thoughtful bride. Congrats on your upcoming nuptials

Thank you.

 

[SandrA9810]

I could see a playstation 3 going on ours... but that's because we're both avid gamers and well we don't have a PS3 or Xbox360 yet.

I would probably tag higher priced items on mine, just because we've been living together for 6 years and have accumulated lots of the little stuff. I already have the cheap stuff. I don't want a duplicate of that so I would put the higher end items like nicer kitchen stuff. I'd love a new shiny set of knives in a nice pretty wooden block... but that's for another day.

And yes, Target is one store that does send you a 15% coupon for any item that you did not recieve. So 15% off a ps3... not a bad deal. Those little scan guns are cool... And since it's for a wedding/shower, it's not something I find surprising. Now if it was for a baby shower, that's a whole nother story right there. There's no baby that needs to watch a 50in plasma TV at birth or anywhere within it's like first 3 years of life.

 

[koima]

How about a book of date ideas, and tickets to something they can do together? If they like sports, tickets to a sporting event, or if they like plays, theater tickets. After our wedding, we were flat broke and it would have been nice to get out together! Costco has tickets for local events reasonably priced, like movie tickets, tickets for the beach boardwalk, spa, etc.

The Entertainment Book for their county might be nice, too.

 

[bumbershoot]

Some places offer a discount if you dont get what you register for. A girl I know put a huge tv on it, knowing she most likely wouldnt get it and they bought it after ward with a 15 % discount I think.

Exactly.




The process of registering is a weird one. I didn't want to do it at all, I had been an avowed registry hater, but then everyone kept bugging me about it. So I figured that instead of telling people what I wanted (which was simply their presence, but no one believed me) I would just do a registry.

Let me tell you, guys LOVE that scanner gun. I would let hubby play with it at the store, then later get online when we were on home and would find SO many things he'd scanned literally behind my back (thankfully all those scans of my butt didn't make it onto the list, LOL). So unless they are avowed gamers, I personally would just assume that hubby either got bored at the store, or they put it on there to buy themselves later with the discount.

Nowadays I try to go off of registries, and I have no problem buying giftcards if I see nothing I want to give or can afford. I liked getting the giftcards, b/c you could pool them to buy things from the registry.

That said, two of the most remembered gifts we got were bright green candlesticks and a soup tureen in the shape of a big thing of cauliflower (went along with a soup recipe book). And we remember them b/c, it turns out, that we like them. I would never have picked out that soup thing on my own, but it cracks me up (in a good way) and I can't wait to really use it (with just the three of us, I don't normally make enough soup to fill a tureen), and I love the color of the candlesticks.


However, with a baby registry, unless there are some drastic mistakes on there (my friend had NO simple onesies on her baby registry, for instance, it was all fussy stuff), just go with the registry or a giftcard. Don't get fancy. My friend (same with the problem registry) invited some of HER friends to my shower b/c she thought there were too few people (sigh). They barely knew me. They got very large and cheap bottles that were almost for sure from the dollar store. They got me some weird formula-mixing thing. They got me some other weird things. My friend got nursery rhyme books but obviously didn't look in them, b/c they were THE most racist, awful nursery rhymes, and we had to throw them away (there was one rhyme about a slave woman having to sell her children????). I was, and am, an avowed mama milk advocate along with being a delayed-solids person, and the things the friends bought me literally went in the trash. So don't do things like that.

About the problem registry...turns out this friend didn't actually choose much of anything. She went to the sites or the stores, found the button that said something like "registry for baby girl", and clicked that. If there were things she specifically wanted, and if choosing that popped up something like "people that chose that also chose this", she would then choose this. She put NO thought into her registries...she had 4, and there were multiples of the same items on both sites...she's an avowed formula user, and she had something like 4 DIFFERENT, and incomplete, bottle sets on her various registries, LOL. I bought from her registry, and NO ONE ELSE did, and when she opened my stuff (disney themed outfits and some Robeez that weren't on her registry but she'd registered for the cheaper Target ones so I figured that was an OK upgrade), she didn't recognize the things she'd registered for, b/c she had barely chosen anything at all.


Anyway, that's just some anecdotes about why registries can be weird. Hope it helps.

 

[JerseyMamaBear]

im on board with wanting the % off coupons to buy what you dident recieve on your registry but you have up until what the stores call your event date (wedding date or due date) to add to it. So why not wait until the day after your shower to add to the registry the items like play stations instead of guests thinking thats what they are suggested to buy? We did this for our baby registry. After our shower we added bigger items like a swing set so we could recieve the 10% off.

 

[Kirby]

I like to use wedding registries to see what color scheme the bride prefers for her home. It is also helpful when I have to buy on-line and ship to long distance showers/weddings that I can't attend. Otherwise, I just use the registry as a starting place.

I like to buy baskets and fill them up with kitchen items. I went to my nephew's wedding shower last weekend. I had found a nice wooden bowl (mixing bowl size) at Wal Mart and filled it with a number of things that I commonly use in my kitchen in the colors she had chosen. It was a big hit at the shower. People thought that I had purchased it already made and thought that it was a great idea.

A number of years ago, we gave a friend of ours a garbage can and a couple of garden hoses for their wedding gift. A year later, the friend told my husband that they had thought the gift odd at first but felt that it was one of the best gifts that they had received. You never know.....

I have a neice that is newly engaged and plans her wedding date in two years. She already lives with her fiance so we will probably do something like the garbage can thing with yard tools or something.

Another good gift is filling a laundry basket with cleaning items or food. Or maybe a basket with spices and condiments. Or a basket with recipes and nonperishable items to cook those recipes.

As far as baby registries, I don't look at them. I give what I liked to use when my children were young and I also get larger sized clothing, like 12 months and up because the new mom usually gets tons of stuff for a new born.

 

[Luvmy4boys]

I have been married for 25 years. Some of our fondest memories are of the quirky gifts we still have no idea what they were.

One gift in particular comes to mind. It has prompted some of the best conversations over the years as we bring them out and have friends try to guess what they are. And while I don't remember 25 years ago what most people gave me, I certainly remember, with great fondness, the couple that gave us this strange but wonderful gift. And no, we still have not figured out what it is to be used for.

This would make a great new thread. If you could post a picture & we could all guess what it is.