The chances of me getting married are pretty slim right now (with the proper legislation in the future, who knows?), so I feel a bit left out knowing that places are giving massive (25%!) discounts to couples for their bridal registries. How do these work? What kinds of systems are in place to guarantee that the couple are actually getting married and not just setting up a bogus registry for massive discounts? Do they make you show a certificate/license? A ring? A graphic videotape of your wedding night/honeymoon?
Has anybody ever considered marrying their friend temporarily just to get 500 dollars off that 2000 dollar TV?
Depends on the store - we were registered at Bed Bath & Beyond, and their “registry completion” discount is 10%. It’s pretty well impossible to open the mailbox and not find a 20% coupon for them, so 10% isn’t much of a deal.
They did not ask anything beyond what the date was going to be.
I did a little poking around at Bloomingdales, Target and Crate & Barrel, and they all offer 10% for a completion discount, so whoever that is that offers a 25% discount is the unusual one.
They probably do hold the completion discount at just 10% because it’s simple enough to be dishonest and set up a fake registry.
They don’t care if you are really getting married or not. It’s not like they do registries as some sort of public service to help out the newlyweds or something. The discounts they give still allow them to make a profit, and registries help attract customers to the store.
Of course the potential to abuse the system is there, but it takes some time and energy and most people would rather just buy the stuff or find other ways to get discounts (sales, etc.)
Tangential, but supposedly in Japan there was a spate of people getting married for a couple’s discount trip to Hawaii, then getting divorced when they got back.
No idea of the factuality of that, though. It could just be a Japanese urban legend.
I’ve been through it, so I know. As **even seven **said, it takes some work to set up a registry. You have to go through the store selecting exactly what you want, in exactly what style or color, to go on the registry. It’s a little bit of fun if you think someone might actually get the item for you as a gift, but it’s way too much work just for a discount.
Actually, the only reason we did it is because our wedding invitees were beginning to ask us where we were registered. It was a convenience for those who wanted to know what to buy for us.
Is it really that much work? I’ve never set one up myself but my impression was that these days the big stores (like Target) give you a handheld scanner and you can just wander around the store scanning barcodes on items you want to add to your registry.
There’s a guy I work with who is a notorious cheapskate, and when he and his wife set up their registry, they had items on there like 99 cent wooden spoons, plastic spatulas, and all kinds of other cheap kitchen crap. I can’t imagine he would have bothered to add things like that if there was any kind of effort involved.
I’m getting married in May '10. Since all the stuff from Bed, Bath and Beyond will be for her, I’m trying to find an electronics store which will let me register for a Wii (and allow multiple people to contribute rather than making one person buy it outright.)
?? Actually t’s incredibly easy at most stores which are popular for registries. (Target, BBB, Pottery Barn). They send you through the store with a scanner, and if that’s too much work, you can do it completely online. You can, subtract, or change items at any time. They also offer lists of the most common and popular registry items online in case you need ideas. (the amazon.com registry even saves the mailing addresses of people who bought you stuff off the resgistry to make thank you notes easier).
If you find this “hard work” its difficult for me to believe you live unsupervised.
That part is easy. The hard part is talking to a customer service rep, filling out forms, dealing with their sales pitches, etc. Given the normal discount of 10%. and the fact that your average person is only going to have a few hundred dollars of disposable income to drop on a one-time spending spree- chances are you might rack up maybe a $40.00 discount. I mean, how many of us regularly drop more than a couple hundred dollars at one store? Pretty rarely, I think. For most of us it’s not worth the time, effort, and constraints.
And if it does happen to be worth it to you, well, the store doesn’t care. They make the same money if you are marrying your childhood sweetheart as they would if you were marrying your dog. Their advantage is they get a load of money at one time and you buy multiple product without a lot of comparison shopping.
It’s The Bay in Canada. The one store that all good Canadians register at when getting hitched.
Having just been at the Bay setting up our registry, I can offer some insight. I ‘pre-registered’ for the Registry at a Wedding Fair. About a week later, we were contacted to set up an appointment to meet with a Registray staff member. We then spent 1.5 hours with her going over all aspects of the Registry (including the discount).
She asked for our wedding day, estimated number of guests, as well as some details about our home, how many bedrooms, bathrooms, square footage, etc.
We then got the gun and wandered around for about 2 hours. We went back the next night for another 2 hours. There are still a couple of items that we weren’t able to find so on Monday we are booked to go to a different store and register there as well (it’s a sister store of the Bay).
All told, it would be a hell of a lot of work to get a 25% discount if you wern’t actually getting married.
Also, it’s not just weddings that you can register for. If you, seodoa want to get free stuff as well as a discount on items in the future, The Bay will also let you reister for Birthday Parties, Baby Showers, College Grads, etc.
So when I was buying something off a reigstry on-line, I got a discount? I never noticed that. Or does it mean the couple gets a discount on items they purchase off the registry?
If, after your wedding (or other ‘event,’ like a graduation, etc.), people haven’t bought all the stuff on your registry, many stores will offer the registry-makers the opportunity to buy the stuff on their registry at a discount. The people buying gifts from a registry most definitely don’t get a discount.
As other posters have noted, the store itself doesn’t do background checks.
However, I’ve heard (no cite, sorry) that some stores won’t apply the offered discount to post-wedding registry purchases unless you’re buying all the remaining items on your registry list.
OK, it wasn’t exactly hard, but it was a lot of time. Time spent wandering up and down the aisles, time spent figuring out exactly what color of some item we wanted to put on the registry, etc. It’s not so easy to decide what others should buy for you. On the one hand you want to pick things you like, on the other you don’t want to appear greedy. It’s great if you get to get the thing as a gift, but there are easier ways to save 10%.
No such restriction at Bed Bath & Beyond, but there is a one-month time limit after the event to use the discount.
And it’s not as if getting married is the only way to get a discount there. Tell 'em you moved in the past year and they’ll give you a moving discount. Bring in another store’s coupon and they’ll probably accept it. Tell 'em what your favorite color is and they’ll give you a discount. OK, so I made that up, but you need to make an effort to not get some kind of discount there. I’ve got a drawer full of their non-expiring 20% off coupons. Want some?
Ah, so the whole thing works for any gift registry, not just the bridal registries? I understand now.
10% discounts aren’t much, but I guess I was surprised to see a store offering 25% discounts for registries. Do they have really high markups? Is that 25% offered for any kind of registry?
ETA: gotpasswords, if there were a Bed, Bath & Beyond in my country, I’d love some coupons. But, alas.
Either you walk into the store knowing that you want Wamsutta supima cotton towels in Mineral, the 6-quart Kitchenaid mixer in licorice, and Crestwood china by Noritake, or you walk in there and get dizzy looking at how high they can stack those towels all the way up to the ceiling and puzzle over which of the 20 colors that those Wamsutta towels come in that you want. That’s where it gets challenging.
A couple days after setting up the registry, you’ll want to revisit it online to weed out the insanity. When you’re in the store, it doesn’t cost you anything to scan stuff and add it to the list, so you’ll wind up with a bunch of weird stuff. I don’t remember which one of us scanned the kegerator, but neither of us drink beer, so it got zapped two days later.
Maybe I’m just a nerd, but I love doing that sort of thing. I can spend hours in a home center or similar store, just looking at the wastefully diverse selection and contemplating what I would like to see in my home someday. My friends invariably go insane with boredom after the first few minutes of shopping with me.
