registry woes

Yesterday I posted this little to do list so let's see how much I accomplished before moving on, shall we?

Pure Barre class

run 2 miles

laundry

sweep/mop downstairs

vacuum upstairs

clean bathrooms

complete psych assignment
read at least one chapter in psych

Looks like I had about a 50% success rate. Not too terrible but I really need to stop procrastinating this psych work. I'm curious, how do you motivate yourself to do something you are really not excited about doing?

Alright, on to wedding things.

Y'all, I am at a lost for this registry business.  I spend what felt like 500 hours setting up registries and then deleting them, research various sites, putting on our website only to take them down, yada yada yada. 

Here's the deal. B bought the house we live in before we were even dating.  And I lived on my own for two years while we were dating but before we moved in together. So, we've got plenty of stuff. Trust me, the process of moving in together was painful because it seemed like we had two of everything and we had to figure out what to keep, what to donate, what to sell.

And for the most part, we've got stuff we like. Before you starting getting ahead of yourself, NO. We don't have fancy stuff.  Most of our things are from Target and Bed, Bath & Beyond. (And there is nothing wrong with that. I looooove me some Target!) We don't have a bunch of Crate & Barrel/Restoration Hardware/Pottery Barn things in our house. Though I wish we did! Plus, our house kitchen is not really designed that well.  It's got an awkward layout and there is not enough storage.

What I'm getting at is, I can't think of many traditional items to register for and I don't want to ask for furniture because a) it's expensive and b) I hope we move into a new house in a few years and who knows what we'll need then.  What's our solution then? To register at a catch-all site AND register for our honeymoon. (Did you all just cringe? Or say to yourself that this is tacky?)

GiftRegistry360

GiftRegistry360.com

This site is great! I looked at a ton of sites where you could put items from different stores into one common registry and this one seemed to be the best for our needs.  Some of the stores are linked (Macy's, William-Sonoma, Crate & Barrel) which means that your registry at that store communicates with your registry on the website. So if someone buys you a gift off your registry, whether in-store, online, or from GiftRegistry360, all the registries reflect that purchase.  

For other stores that are not linked (Target, Home Depot, Bed, Bath & Beyond), the purchaser needs to come back to the site to mark the item off as checked. For our wedding guests who are part of the millennial generation (or whatever we're called... Gen X? Gen Y?) I doubt this will be an issue.  The registry site clearly explains that. For our older guests, it may be an issue but I'm not overly concerned.  So we get a repeat gift. I'm sure we can use a gift receipt and exchange it. Not the end of the world.

Bottom Line: The fact that items are linked from certain retailers is a huge advantage over some of the other sites I looked at (Merci Registry, MyRegistry.com).  We were able to register for items from your typical stores like Crate & Barrel to Home Depot and Anthropologie - score!

Honeymoon Registry
This is where it gets a little tricky.  I am well aware that this is a newer idea and it may not sit well with people.  B and I work really hard and we want to be able to take a nice honeymoon. But there is no way we can afford one currently. He is paying all of our bills and I'm in school full-time.  We will get married in March, I graduate in April, and then take the licensing exam in May.  We don't know yet when the honeymoon will be (June or July) but unless we want to spend a night in Galveston, we can't afford anything else on our own.  And no, Galveston is not an option!  It's our honeymoon - we only get one!

Wanderable.com

Has anyone registered for a honeymoon before? We are looking at using Wanderable.com but I haven't set it up yet for a variety of reasons - we don't yet know where we want to go and I'm not sure if this is best site to use.  It's a pain to set up the whole thing only to have to take it down and set up a new one when you realize that the site doesn't fit your needs.

Here is what I'm hoping to get out of a honeymoon registry:
- guests can gift us a portion of travel and lodging (a night in the hotel, $50 toward airfare)
- guests can gift us an experience (scuba diving, massage, dinner)
- money is not tied to the actual item (if we are only gifted $100 out of the $200 for a couple's massage, then we are free to use the money in another way - or pay the rest out of pocket)
- we can use the money ourselves to purchase these things (don't have to go through the site)

- there is no fee for the guests

- there is no fee for us

I would LOVE to hear any and all advice you ladies have on this topic! What are your can't-live-without house items? What did you do (or wish you did) for your honeymoon? Have you had any success or failure registering for a honeymoon?

Thank you!

xoxo,

Cait

PS - If you want to see my wedding website or our gift registry, just comment below! I don't mind emailing it out but I don't want to post it for any ol' crazy to stalk!