Registering for Wedding Gifts

Wedding Gifts

According to 2013 wedding surveys, brides and grooms create an average of two to three different wedding registries. Guests don’t see this as a greedy grab for presents; they know that couples have different preferences and needs for their home. Perhaps they like the Crate and Barrel glassware and party serving platters, and the Macy’s bedding. Your different gift lists at each of the stores where you register for wedding gifts will show your style, and guests appreciate knowing what you love, so that they can give you presents you’ll adore and use often.

Here are the different kinds of registries that wedding couples are creating:

Kitchen and Entertaining: At stores like Crate and Barrel, Williams Sonoma, Bed Bath and Beyond and other similar stores, you can register for your kitchen appliances like coffee makers, blenders, espresso machines, juicers and food processors, as well as your everyday glassware and dishes. China and crystal patterns are also available here.

Home and Bedding: Bed Bath and Beyond, Macys and other like stores may be your choice for your bedding, bath linens, table cloths, pillows and other fabric-oriented gifts.

Home Projects: At stores like Home Depot and Lowes, you can register for everything you need to redecorate or remodel your home – items like paints and window treatments – as well as a stock of tools and machines, a mailbox, and especially gardening supplies and equipment for a fabulous garden.

Honeymoon: A popular wedding gift registry, honeymoon registries allow guests to give you amazing experiences during your romantic getaway. Sign up for romantic private dinners on the beach, spa treatments and massages, swimming with dolphins, champagne sunset cruises, tours, shares of your honeymoon suite and especially gift cards to the resort that let you splurge on a fresh new discovery without spending any of your wedding gift money.

Charitable: If you have all the housewares you need, you might choose to have your wedding ‘give back’ by signing on to have guests contribute gift amounts to your favorite charities in lieu of giving you a wrapped or cash gift. They contribute, and you get an email saying they contributed to your cause.

Active: If you both share a love of the outdoors and an active lifestyle, you might register at a store like REI, where you’ll get sporting and camping gear, perhaps a dual kayak as a group gift from the bridal party, and more gift cards to spend as you please.

Entertainment: An Amazon.com gift registry can let you sign up for anything available on the site, but more couples are signing on for decorative coffee table books, cookbooks, magazine subscriptions, DVD collections to build their home entertainment library and tech items like Kindles and other gadgets for personal entertainment.

Experiences: A Cloud9Living.com registry lets you sign up for a range of different experiences, like driving a stock car or taking a cooking lesson from an award-winning chef, or taking samba lessons, or going on an adventure vacation that could potentially be your honeymoon. Guests who give you wedding gifts from this registry add to the shared adventures of your marriage.

Small gift shops and galleries, specialty retail stores and other boutiques have also launched their own wedding gift registries, so you’re not limited to the larger chain stores’ gift items. You may find authentic imported Italian platters or decanters at one boutique or a collection of hand-blown glass ornaments at another boutique. Our local New Jersey bridal magazines and New York Magazine list a collection of these unique gift registries on their sites, so your guests who prefer to shop locally and support local artisans and businesses will love finding out that they can shop for your wedding gift in their locally-sourced value system. And you’ll get some wonderful, artistic gifts to use in your happily ever after.

And a relatively new wedding gift registry trend is signing onto a registry site that allows you to list items from many different stores, all in one registry. Sites like MyRegistry.com and GiftRegistry360.com let you create a universal registry with your choices from multiple stores, and GiftRegistry360.com also has an app that allows you to scan new items onto your gift list using your smartphone, no matter where you are and no matter when you find an item you would love as a wedding gift.