So far, a little over two months into wedding planning, the most difficult part about the whole thing has been creating a registry! Okay, yeah, I know… this should by far be the easiest and most enjoyable experience (I’m basically shopping with other people’s money) but it really is a pain. There are just so many steps and so many hoops to jump through and then there’s this moment where you sit back and think “do I actually need all of this stuff? This is so consumeristic!” Ultimately, I’d like to give people a guide because inevitably I will be given gifts for my wedding and I’d rather get stuff I need and like than stuff I don’t need and don’t like. So here’s my painful process:
The first thing I did to start a registry was make a list of everything I think I will need. The knot has a decent list of everything couples typically register for. The problem is, it’s so much stuff. Having been on a family reunion-vacation this week, I enlisted the help of my mom and my two aunts. I went through the list and asked them what they thought was a good thing to have on my list and what would just end up being clutter. They helped me put together a pretty solid list.
Then, I had to decide where to register. That was pretty easy. I love Sur La Table and Crate and Barrel. Plus, I knew we’d want some quirkier/handmade elements that you can really only get from etsy. Phil wants to register for kayaks so we’ll have to have a store like REI or Costco (hey! That’s where my dad got his kayak!) on there. And, of course, target – it’s cost effective and might even have a wider variety of things. That’s a lot to take in. So I decided to research online registries.
I looked at four different online registries: Myregistry.com, Giftregistry360.com, eregistry.com, and Ourwishingwell.com. After looking into these four, I learned that there are several different features that online gift registries tend to offer: compiling registries from other online stores, choosing items from other places on the web (say, etsy or ikea that don’t have their own online registry), the ‘thank you’ feature, which keeps track of who bought what so you can easily write thank you’s after your showers and wedding, and adding items to your registry like ‘honeymoon’ and ‘house deposit’ where people can give money for specific things instead of gifts.
Even though eregistry and ourwishingwell were cool because you could ask for money on them (you can also ask for money on myregistry and on tripraiser.com), I quickly narrowed down my list to giftregistry360 and myregistry. I was all ready to go with myregistry since it allowed you to upload from all the sites I thought I wanted to register on (GR360 doesn’t seem to be compatible with Sur La Table) when I noticed all of the extra little features on GR360. There, you can list a ‘priority’ for each item. That seems to me like a huge benefit. It would be such a bummer to end up with all of our ‘wants’ and none of our ‘needs.’ You can also search by a bunch of different categories like brand, price, retailer and category which might end up being really handy. Plus, GR360 looks really cool (so shallow! but it does help sway the scales!).
I had one last criteria that I wanted to check: how does each site make their money? I was concerned about this because I knew I was going to register for a bunch of things from etsy and I wanted to be sure that the artists held on to as much of their money as possible. From what I could tell, merchants paid $15/mo to be a part of myregistry.com, which means that they can add the widget to their website and have a dashboard to track how many people use their site through myregistry, etc. Not bad. I probably wouldn’t sign up as a merchant, but it seems like they aren’t taking money away for every purchase. GR360 collects commission on every purchase. Though I don’t know all the details with that, it worries me for the sake of all these independent artists! I want to help them through my registry, not hurt them.
Oh, one other thing that I found when I was looking for all that information on how the sites make their money – I found some interesting tidbits on how the sites get updated when someone makes a purchase. The GR360 website says this: “If a guest goes in-store to purchase an item off your 360 list that was added through our catalog and you do not have an in-store registry with that retailer, your 360 list will not be automatically updated. The guest should contact customer service for them to make the update.” Myregistry says this: “all that one needs to do if they buy from a store that cannot be linked & synced is go back to the site and click a button next to the item indicating that they purchased the item.” Myregistry seems like it avoids a huge headache with the way they do things.
I think I’ve made my decision – despite the look of the site and the search features that GR360 shows, I’ll be giving Myregistry a try. In a few days, I’ll most likely have an update for you.
What online registries have you tried? Has it been a dream or a nightmare? I’m very interested in what everyone else has experienced.
Gotta go catch a plane!
Heidi
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