BellaOnline Forums Relationships Married No Kids Another reminder of the $$ we save!

I love registries (I like getting something people actually want) but, like Ingilbert, I hate it when they only register at expensive stores. We registered for our china at an expensive dept store and everything else at a cheap store. You couldn't get the china there.

My cousin's getting married this month. At Bed Bath & Beyond (where she's registered), they give you one day to shop for everything you didn't receive on your registry at 40% off. This may be a policy at other stores too and may be why the lists are so long. Also, they may have a lot of people coming to the wedding and/or shower.

When DH & I got married, I was 23 and he was 25, and though we'd been living together, we were still starting out in our jobs, etc., and were basically using hand-me-down stuff for the kitchen and cheaper stuff for the bedding/bathrooms, etc. We registered in 2 places - any more would've been a little silly, in our opinion - one of them was JCPenney and one was Bed, Bath & Beyond, which to this day, is still one of my favorite stores (love those coupons!). We thought we'd be making it easy on our guests so that they wouldn't have to guess at what we'd want, especially because we lived far away and had a completely different lifestyle than a lot of the family/friends that were coming to our wedding. Well, we did end up getting a lot of the "staples" on our two registries, but there were tons and tons of things (our registries weren't lengthy by any means) that we still didn't get, yet we got plenty of guests' choice items, which were odd, at best. What I thought was awesome was when people gave $ or gift cards, to be honest, since that leaves it ultimately up to us and they didn't have to go to the trouble of perusing our registry lists and picking out an item.

We did our own thing on the expensive china, so that wasn't something we asked for from anyone. Those formal china place settings are way too expensive!

Whenever I have to purchase something for a baby shower, DH & I always remark that it would've been great to have been able to have a gift registry for each of our kitties when we adopted them! Why not? Those are our "kids". Seems only fair to me. Of course, now that we've been married a few years and our tastes have changed a bit (and we're still lacking some kitchen stuff we needed back then), we've joked that we should do an anniversary registry and have a celebration for "special" anniversaries, like the 5th (which we celebrated in Jamaica in 2006).

I do think it's easier as a guest for someone to have a registry--you don't have to even think about what to get them, just pick something out off the registry that's in your price range, and you're done. But at the same time it seems so impersonal, that no one has to think about the person/couple and think of what would be perfect for them.

When my DH and I got married, we didn't want a registry. We had lived together for almost 5 years already and didn't need any 'registry' type stuff and it felt greedy to think of what to put on one. But his darn aunt and grandparents kept insisting that we get a registry so that people would know what we wanted. So after tons of nagging we finally did one at target. And guess what we received off of it at the reception? NOT ONE DAMN THING!!!!!!!!!! Nope, not even his grandparents or aunt got us anything off of it. Come to think of it, his aunt didn't even give us a card!! I was pretty annoyed by that, because I really had not wanted to do a registry. But we did get some beautiful gifts and cards from others. One of my absolute favorites was a wooden kaleidescope--the card that went with it said something like 'may your love change and grow and always be beautiful, like the colors of a kaleidescope'. So I think non-registry gifts are way better.

Hey, it just occurred to me that the couple that gave us the kaleidescope are CF! I knew I really liked 'em for a reason

Just focussing on the "kids having so much stuff" thing.

My friend is a very poor single Mum (the one who deliberately got 'accidentally' pregnant and never told the guy until her daughter was 5 and then found out he was now in prison...). She and her daughter came to stay the summer before last (never again, she expected I would drop my life and act as tour guide to them for four days) and I had saved up a couple of things, including a little teddy bear for the little girl to take home. When I pulled out the teddy bear, my friend said "please no, she has SO many toys, she really doesn't need any more". So even kids from poor families appear to have heaps of stuff.

That seems rude to me, that she would say she doesn't want your gift.

When our friend had her baby, I bought the MUM a present, some bath products or lotions or something so that - whenever she got a chance - she could pamper herself a little.

It annoys me when I see kids junk thrown out and just sitting on the street outside a house. It seems SUCH a waste and yes I do see that sometimes.
The stuff that is given should be appreciated by the parents for goodness sake!
I mean HELLO it's a PRESENT!!