I don’t mind buying things for other people’s wedding registries at all (although it does still seem a bit odd), but am not at all comfortable with the idea of having a wedding registry of my own (I’m not getting married, but just discussing the topic.) There is something uncomfortably forward about putting forth a list of “Things we want you (guests) to buy for us.” Is it, statistically these days, more common for weddings in America to have registries or not?
(Actually, if I ever became super-rich I would rather like the idea of a wedding-registry-in-reverse, where I would ask my guests to tell me what they would like **me **to buy them. I think that would be neat)
Wedding gift registries are an interesting contradiction. On the one hand, they take all responsibility away from the gift-giver to put any thought into finding an appropriate gift for the gift-receiver.
On the other hand, they ensure that any gift given is wanted and appreciated, and how can that be anything but good for long term efficiency of the overall process?
So yeah, I can see both sides of the issue. But since I find myself far more often on the gift-giving side of the equation, I find them a godsend.
They’re quite helpful, especially when I don’t know the bride and groom all that well. (which is frequently the case). If there wasn’t a registry, I wouldn’t have a clue as to what they need.
Registries also help ensure that the newlyweds don’t end up with 12 toasters or mismatched tableware.
The trick to having them not seem “forward” is to use them the old-fashioned way - spread the info by word of mouth in response to inquiries. When I got married nearly 30 years ago, registries were not as common as they are today. So people would ask my mother what I liked, or what color my kitchen was. It didn’t work so well as my mother’s taste is very different from mine and that’s before accounting for the four crockpots.
Even word of mouth may not be necessary. There are, I think, a few stores commonly used for wedding registries (Williams-Sonoma, Bed, Bath and Beyond, Macy’s, Target and perhaps Amazon nowadays). Once for a wedding of someone I knew, I just checked the various registries until I found the couple listed.
Nah, you still get to pick something that you also happen to like, but from a list of ideas and with the knowledge that there will not be three identical spice racks.
As it was explained to me when my wife and I were resisting creating one: many people absolutely insist on giving wedding gifts, even if they are specifically told not to.
Hell, you can usually just Google “Bride name and groom name registry” and find it if you don’t know what store.
Wedding etiquette is so weird and I feel like it comes up on this board a lot. You have a group of people who want to give you a gift you like, you would rather get something you actually like, but you can’t directly say “give me this” because it would be rude. So you have to make a registry, and then indirectly notify all these people about your registry. In our case, we had a “wedding website” with all sorts of various information, and then had the link to that on our invitation.
I would say they are standard in at least my part of the US. We didn’t have one, as we were in our mid 30s and had all the shit we needed when we got married, but every wedding I’ve attended in the past five years or so has had a registry.
I find it useful to think of this - Weddings are not just for the bride and groom, they are for the family and community. If all you wanted to do was get married, you could just go to the county official and get it done. But by having a wedding, you are sharing the celebration. By doing that, everyone is a participant! And, as participants, they want to contribute! The way that is usually done is by giving a gift. The registry is just an organizational tool for the participants.
We got married in the pre-internet era. I and my current friends, coworkers, etc., were living in one state. She and her friends, coworkers, and family lived in another state. My family and my long-time friends lived in a third state. The wedding was to be in her state after which she’d be moving to live in my house in my state.
This was before the major consolidation of department stores, so most chains were local-ish. So we ended up with three parallel wedding registries in the three states’ mainstream Macy’s equivalents since by bad luck no major chain was in any two, much less all three states.
So far so good-ish.
Then unbeknownst to us my almost-wife’s Mom changed all the registrations in her state because she didn’t like some of the items and patterns wife and I had chosen. Of course she had no idea about the other registries in the other cities. And of course this state represented about 75% of the guests / present-buyers.
It made for an “entertaining” gift opening. MIL’s OK, but every now and then over the years I’ve had to remind her how close she came to being disowned by her own daughter at her very wedding over that dick move.
