Yeah, I would agree ordinarily. I pushed back pretty hard against the idea of a registry for just that reason. Family on both sides was pretty shocked at the vehemence of my response. It took a little convincing.
The tacky thing to do is to put the name of the registry in the invitation package. If people care, they can ask where the bride is registered. If they don’t, then they are welcome to get whatever they please (or nothing at all, which is our preference for most of our friends). Everyone ends up happy, as registries do make shopping much easier for those who are inclined to use them. And if using a registry is not your bag, you never even have to know that one exists. Life is good for everyone.
If you are fortunate, you may have friends organized enough to band together to buy you a gift. $40 each from 8 people and you’ve got a big appliance. Some people would rather contribute to a group gift than have to wrap something themselves.
I think gift registries are tacky, but I got pressured into setting one up for my wedding a few years ago. Ya’see, my mom and dad belong to a church and have a little group of friends from their church. My parents have been to the showers/weddings of all their friends’ kids and so I had to have a shower too. But these people had never seen my house and didn’t know me very well. So a registry was the perfect answer.
If you’re serious, I’d dearly love a new crock pot! The one I have came out my dad’s garage; it’s a circa 1967 burnt orange affair with a non-grounded plug wrapped in electrical tape. I’m thinking it’s probably not all that safe.
I’m not opposed to registries; I’ve noticed that your typical wedding usually includes at least 50 guests who have never even met the bride and groom, but were included at the insistance of Mothers. Without a registry they’d either end up giving cash, which some find impersonal (not me, I can be deeply moved by cash), or some kind of generic vase or picture frame, which will probably be returned for cash because it clashes with everything else in the house.
Where registries become tacky is when people mistake them for Holy Gospel. I view them as suggestions (hey, we like this kind of stuff!) rather than commands (BUY ME THIS OR NO SHRIMP COCKTAIL FOR YOU!). The guest who buys the Hershey bar that was accidently added when hubby-to-be was playing with the wand thingy deserves a thank-you note just as much as the guest who sprung for the 2,000 count Egyptian cotton sheets. Count yourself lucky they care enough to buy you anything at all.
We didn’t do a real registry, and some people gave us things that we definitely needed and appreciated: a kitchen trashcan, non-stick cooking pans, cast-iron cooking pans, etc. And some people gave us money, which we used to buy other things we needed: a dish drying rack, a huge cutting board…
…but we also ended up with 3 new sets of silverware. I had a nice set of silverware already. No one thought of buying a dishes-and-bowls set…so we have around 150 extra forks, spoons, and knives, but only five plates and four bowls. And one serving dish.
It’s bizarre. I wish I’d had a registry now, but it’s hard to do that for an elopement.
I haven’t read the rest of the thread, so I may be in the minority but… it just seems so tacky to me to ask for anything but household items in a registry.
My logic is this: the idea behind giving wedding gifts is to set up a household for a newlywed couple–in the past, people would be moving straight from daddy’s house and wouldn’t have had all those years in college and co-habitating to collect toasters and bedsheets. So people gave them as gifts at the wedding.
In exactly the same way as it’s tacky and rude to demand a baby shower for anything but a first baby, it’s tacky to ask for anything other than what you need or want to set up your house at the wedding.
People aren’t giving you wedding gifts the way they give birthday presents, there’s a specific reason for it… and as much as Mr. Armadillo jokes about registering for the whole South Park DVD series, I cannot bring myself to ask for anything except upgraded kitchen equipment, dishes, linens, and such. I wish we could register at Home Depot so he could pick out stuff he likes, tools and things for the house, but I’m also not going to be or seem totally greedy and demanding by registering at a ton of different places.
So register at Sears which has all that stuff, including tools. I think once you register at one place, registering at two or three is no more offensive. Tools are just as much “for housekeeping” as linens and kitchen stuff.
I refused to have a registry for our wedding. Not an occasion suited to the collection of swag, to me. My refusal might have had something to do with watching friends who had registries go through and add up the exact cash value of the loot they landed. Don’t get me wrong, we were dirt poor when we got married, but I’m a sight too proud to do something which again, to me, was holding my hand out for goodies.
On the other hand, they’ve passed into genteel use, and I have to accept that most people, guests and couples alike find them useful. Several of my husband’s family members were most upset that we didn’t have a registry, they are incredibly generous people and wanted to help us get set up. I don’t know, maybe if we’d been less poor at the time I’d have been less proud and stubborn about it.
Maeglin- I’m with you on this. Not tacky, as long as it’s not on the invitation.
We’re having a registry, but it’s for our guests’ convenience too. Many of our guests will be from overseas, or are elderly. Having a registry at a store which will deliver gifts which have been paid for online saves them making inconvenient trips, paying exorbitant postage or having to take extra baggage on long flights. If they’d prefer to give cash, or a gift that isn’t on the registry, that’s fine too. They’ll have to call my mother and ask if/where we’re registered, we’re not going to presume they want to know.
Although irishfella and I have been living away from home, part of that time together, we’ve been in rented accommodation, so although we have some of the basics, we don’t have all of them. Flatware, good quality pots and pans, kitchen gadgets, bed linen and towels would still be appreciated. Neither of us are ornament/art people, so although we’ll be grateful to anyone generous enough to give us a gift, I’d rather we didn’t get picture frames and trinkets from people who thought that we must already be “set up”.
Big Bad Voodoo Lou and Marlitharn, I have to apologize…it would seem I spoke too soon. When I told my wife that some Dopers would take our extra crock pots off of our hands, her response was “What extra crock pots?”
When I explained, she informed me that we re-gifted them two years ago at two separate housewarming parties. I have a vague recollection of the parties, but not the re-gifting. Of course, they were very good parties, so some memory loss is to be expected.
Apparently the third extra crock pot is not an extra at all – it’s quite small, so it’s used when my wife doesn’t feel like dragging out the monster crock pot.
In the beginning, people bought wedding presents that would help get a house going. . .toasters, linens, etc. The problem was, people got repeats of some things they needed, none of other things they needed, and perhaps mismatched other things that really didn’t help.
The solution: a registry. You register for those things you need, and a store keeps a list to make sure you’re not getting duplicates. Seemingly tacky at first, but very practical and easier for BOTH SIDES not to be used.
The logical extension in our consumer society where people are unable to control any shopping impulse that enters their brain: friggin’ morons think that it should be used for things they just want that they’re too cheap to buy for themselves.
Yes, a registry is within smelling distance of tackiness. Putting DVDs on it crosses the tackiness line by about 3 billion miles. That’s BILLION, not million.
I’m in my early 30s, and have been to tons of weddings over the past 6-8 years. I haven’t seen stuff like DVDs show up on any registries. I hope it’s isolated cases.
Two of my good friends got married last summer. They each owned a HOUSE going in. There was still plenty of stuff they needed. Get rid of that old beat up pan, those thread-bare towels, get a knife set.
A gift registry for wedding presents isn’t tacky in itself (using ‘tacky’ as a euphemism for “against standard etiquette”). What is tacky (against standard etiquette) is putting any mention of registries on your wedding invitation. Registry information should only be given to those who ask for it. Other registry ‘rules’ – registering for money via mortgage or honeymoon registries is against standard etiquette (site: Miss Manners). And it is against standard etiquette to insist that people must buy only from your registry. Tackiest registry story ever – I heard of a woman who bought a crystal vase as a wedding gift for some friends and arranged to have flowers delivered monthly for the first year to fill it with. Lovely idea, right? Well, in the receiving line at the reception, the bride said to the guest, “Oh, that was a pretty vase, but it wasn’t on our registry. When can you come pick it up to exchange it for something off our list?” Now, that was tacky!
As for putting DVDs and stuff on a registry… well, that does seem wrong to me too. I just think wedding presents should be more substantial – things to set the couple up in their new home. That said, I don’t have a real problem with putting that stuff on there. People who want to buy the couple future heirlooms can, and people who don’t care about that can buy them the movies.
My father used to do this. Of course, that was because my mother had absolute gift-giving powers and the man never learned how to wrap anything because of it. His most repeated line at every party he ever went to was “What’d I get you?”
Well, it’s all very well and good to want the registry to only have “Set up the new house” stuff when it really is a new house, but it’s just not gonna work for some people. Like I said, Bird Man and I moved in together the December before last, and bought a house last November. What we need is new furniture, but how do you register at Slumberland? Our friends, like ourselves, don’t have much cash, so we’re not getting a new sofa. If they want to give us something they know we’ll like, they can get us a DVD. I don’t see why this should be a problem for anyone.
It’s not a problem, struck me as a bit unusual is all. This couple hasn’t been co-habitating or living anywhere but their assigned bedrooms at their parents’ homes, so yeah, household items seem a better use of my giftage cash IMO.
Turns out it’s not that unheard of, and there are a few very plausible reasons this registry looked different than any I’d ever seen. Once again, Dopers have the answers, thanks!
I’ve got one that’s just as tacky. I used to work at a store that sold jewelry and giftware and china and crystal and silver, and did a large business in wedding registries. They had a hard time convincing brides that it was just not proper to put a note on the registry that said, “Bride prefers full place settings only. Please do not buy single pieces.”
We also got a lot of brides who would register for lots of little knickknacky stuff like frames and vases and decorative bowls. After the wedding, they’d come in and exchange it all for store credit, and then come over to the jewelry side and buy themselves a nice little trinket or two. :rolleyes:
I came home last summer to visit, and found out that an old friend of mine had sent a wedding invitation. (With “Registered at Target” right on the invite, no less.) I hadn’t seen this friend in several years, (we’d had a slight falling out) and was kind of surprised she was getting married then. I knew she’d had this college boyfriend, but the relationship had never seemed that serious. Right away, witch that I am, I’m thinking “Ha! Little Miss Goody Two Shoes got herself knocked up!” Jokingly, of course.
Well, I’m in Target, and figure I should probably print off the registry and see what they’ve registered for. I do so, and am surprised to find numerous baby items on there. I call my mum, and ask her if this is some wierd American custom. Are they planning on having kids right away, and want to make sure they have all the stuff? My mother asks the women she works with, and the consensus is that the bride to be is most definitely preggers. I see her a couple of weeks later, (after hearing that they actually got engaged in January, and she didn’t get pregnant til April) and she is out to here. Just huge! She later had the baby sometime in August or September, I think, and not a word was said about him being surprisngly premature!
