How many places are you registering...

[Mara]

It's a slow night and I'm waiting for Greg to get home from rehearsal with our food.

Thinking about wedding presents as we come up to the bridal shower (later this month) and updating my registries.




I know in the past that it was mostly that people had only one registry, for all their items, like a Macy's or similar. But now it seems like the smaller specialty stores get some business, along with still...a Macy's or similar.




How many places are you registering with...? Some people seem to be older fashioned, and exclaim when I say 3. But what's wrong with spreading it out? One store doesn't have everything I want. It's not like I expect a present from each store for each person (ooh!)...anyway...how many places and if you are more than one...have you gotten any surprised looks when you tell people?

BTW our stores are Williams Sonoma (only a few items I couldn't find elsewhere); Crate and Barrel (75% of the items), and Pottery Barn (20%).

 

[pauls girl]

I'm also registering at 3...but I haven't yet! I should get off my hump and do it. We went up to Portland at Christmas, and had scheduled to register at a local mall department store up there (very similar to Macy's), but after 2 weeks of cake tastings, photographer interviews, veil searches, florist interviews, Christmas parties, etc. We were BURNED OUT. So, we never made it over there. I would love to register at Macy's, but the majority of people going to the wedding don't have a Macy's near them, and they would have to go online to purchase a registry gift. Because of this, and because we are talking about people like my Dad & Grandma who get flustered just trying to attach a file to an email, I figured "hands on" would be best. So, we are going to be going up to Portland again in April & will register then (and meet with the Minister finally). I am also registering at Crate and Barrel & William Sonoma. I love cool kitchen gadgets! The thing I am most excited to register for is the really nice PROFESSIONAL 6 QUART BOWL LIFT STAND MIXER WITH 525 WATT MOTOR & POURING SHIELD by Kitchen Aid in Stainless Steel. (Do I sound like an advertisement?) I love to bake stuff, and have wanted this mixer forever.

I haven't told anyone yet where we will be registering, but then again no one has asked.

Considering it's still 6 months away, I figure they will start asking in the next couple months - and so I guess we'd better get out there and register!

 

[Mara]

I had my registries set up about 9 months ago.

My girlfriend who got married a few years back told me to do it early so that people (like fam and best friends) could buy us gifts off the registries for things like Bday and Christmas etc...so effectively starting the cycle earlier. Of course we did that and no one bought anything for holidays from there! BUT we did have an engagement party in August and we got a bunch of stuff for that from them. So it was handy to have them done early.




You know you can register online for C&B right? I did all my stuff online.




I have the KitchenAid 625 mixer (the largest)...I LOVE it. I love to bake. I hardly ever use it except for holiday and parties, because in reality, it's quite a production to use it (and clean it etc), but I wanted it for years and I finally got it 2 years ago on eBay for about 1/2 price. It was from KitchenAid, reconditioned, but worked great and for the price, couldn't beat it. I need to get another bowl or two though for when I am mixing really large batches at the holidays or when I need to whip only egg whites and still make the rest of the cake in the other bowl, having the one doesn't work as well then. I hope you get yours. Everyone should have a KAid mixer!

My shower is March 27 so I am checking my registries to be sure that everything is up to date. I didn't want to go insane, so I remove and add things sparingly...because I want to be sure I get the stuff I really want and not just random stuff. But I can always return items I don't want 'as much' to get the ones I do (e.g. china) if it doesn't complete.

 

[DancinGirl]

I have 3... Sears, JCPenney, and Linens N Things!

 

[Kay]

I received a 5 quart Artisan KitchenAid mixer for Christmas (in black to match my other apliances) and I just love it. It works great and it looks great sitting on my counter.

We haven't registered yet because the wedding is over a year a way, but it will probably be Macy's, Bed Bath & Beyond, and maybe one more if there are some kitchen items I can't find at the other two.

 

[glitterata]

We registered at Michael C. Fina, Cooking.com, and Amazon.com. Every one of them was a nightmare.

Fina sent us the wrong stuff over and over, and returning it was nearly impossible, I had to actually cry on the phone to customer service--I'm talking tears and sobbing--before anyone even tried to fix it.

Cooking.com has a confusing system where they leave your stuff up on their website even when people have already bought it, so all your friends think you still need a waffle iron and an ice cream maker. We got like three of each. Returning them was a huge pain.

Amazon had the same problem--they confused our friends into sending several copies of stuff. And they listed items that they didn't actually carry or have in stock, which was frustrating--people wanted to get things for us but couldn't.

I can't believe what a bad job registries in general seem to do. One bride I knew registered with Simon Pearce, the fancy crystal and china boutique, and they somehow listed only her serving pieces on her registry, not the dinner plates and wine glasses, etc. She ended up with nothing but pitchers and platters. I've heard terrible stories about Macy's, too.

You'd think these places would go out of their way to make their bridal customers happy--after all, you're bringing them a ton of business. I guess they think once they've got you, it doesn't matter how they treat you--you're stuck with them.

Avoid Fina, though. They were really callous and rude as well as incompetent.

 

[Mara]

glitter...sorry to hear about an unfortunate experience!!

I have been pretty happy with C&B, PB and WS...so far anyway. They keep their online registries up to date like their stores, you can buy online or offline, it's easy for everyone. I've used C&B myself for friends repeatedly...never really had a glitch problem thank goodness. Like how they allow various shipping addresses, different options, etc.




Only pet peeve in general on online registries is when they say that the request is 'complete' or 'fulfilled' and then they still give you an option to put in a quantity to buy for them. If it's complete/fulfilled, shouldn't that box be gray for Buy it Now? Some do have the box grayed or gone, which is great, but ones that don't...I always want to throttle them. THAT is how you end up with 3 waffle irons!!

 

[glitterata]

That's exactly right, Mara. They didn't gray out the box after the first waffle iron, and my less observant friends didn't notice the tiny number indicating that someone had already given us one.

"Why, why, why?" I asked them. "Don't you have brides calling every day to complain about all the duplicate waffle irons?"

"No, you're the only one," they told me. Somehow I don't believe them.

It was interesting how many people wanted to give us a waffle iron and an ice-cream maker. I guess they're more festive than a frying pan.

On a happier note, I highly recommend the waffle iron. It's a Cuisinart--the round, regular style, not the belgian. Sturdy, reliable, lightening fast. We use it pretty much every weekend. It beats the eggs out of the toastmaster I had before.

 

[Mara]

I have an expensive belgian from Williams Sonoma that I got on eBay for almost 1/2 price..reconditioned but works like new as far as I know...have had it for a few years. It's great! We have taken to using it in the new house more because we 'rediscovered' alot of our cooking tools now that we have so much more room to play around in the kitchen. It's actually fun now! So I've been making us breakfast every weekend on Sundays and then we chill out at our kitchen island to drink coffee and read the paper. It's fun.

Highly recommend the waffle makers...yummy stuff. I've started experimenting with the recipes too. Made cinammon oatmeal ones last weekend. Rave reviews.

 

[fire&ice]

----------------
On 3/3/2004 1:33:03 AM Mara wrote:


How many places are you registering with...? Some people seem to be older fashioned, and exclaim when I say 3. But what's wrong with spreading it out? >----------------

Mara, I'm somewhat old fashioned & I never heard of registering at just one place. I couldn't register at enough places. Back in my time, they gave you a free gift for registering. I registered at the local jewelry stores in the various "hometowns." I registered at the big department stores. I registered at the local kitchen/gift store. Heck, if I were getting married today, I'd register at Target - cool Michael Graves stuff & pratical stuff like water purifiers.

I say register everywhere. But, as an older person, it wouldn't dawn on me to look at on-line registries. Interesting. However, I do ask where someone is registered.

 

[sumi]

ZERO!

By the time we got married, my husband and I had already been living together for three years. There was really nothing we didn't have. (Well, in terms of the type of things you usually register for: linens, kitchen stuff, etc). My husband loves to cook and bake so we basically had every conceivable kitchen gadget there was. We already had everything from a pannini grill to a Cuisinart food processor, to an ice cream maker, etc, etc. Plus, our wedding was VERY TINY, only about 10 people total. We only had our immediate family members present. We mostly got cash from our parents, and the ONE kitchen goodie we didn't have: the Kitchen Aid stand mixer. YES! I LOVE that thing, especially the kneading attachment. We also bought an awesome set of AllClad pots and pans with some of our wedding money.



This may shock some of you, but I think our total wedding cost was something like $700: excluding food and cake because my mom bought that, but including the officiant and my (VERY SIMPLE) wedding dress. We splurged on the honeymoon and wedding rings. We got all the flowers ourselves from the LA Flower mart. We had SO MANY flowers, but our wedding was small so we didn't need too much to fill up the place. My mom has two licenses in Japanese flower arrangement and she made some lovely arrangements for us. Plus, it was in my sister's beautiful garden so there were already many flowers blooming in the garden itself. Gosh, it was so perfect, it was so beautiful! Oh, stop me now because I can go on and on all day about how perfect my wedding day was......

 

[Mara]

Congrats Sumi on doing what sounds like a wonderful wedding on a budget!! Weddings are a huge ripoff.

I'm so glad we decided on Hawaii...everything we want is going to be basically 50% of what we would have spent on the same stuff here locally in the BayArea and of course we would not have had the beautiful tropical ocean as the backdrop for our wedding AND we would have paid more. Insanity.

By doing the wedding in Hawaii and resultingly cheaper, it lets us splurge more on the honeymoon, which is great. In the end, we are going to be gone in Hawaii and Tahiti for a total of about 2.5 weeks. A great wedding, awesome tropical locales, and 2.5 weeks off work and relaxing, all for less than what we'd have paid locally for a wedding. Does it really get better than that?

Speaking on registering, we both are a little older...and have accumulated quite alot of stuff on our own...however I absolutely *adore* kitchen stuff. Greg loves Bar stuff. Especially now that we have such a huge kitchen and a 'wine room', I went nuts on the registries. Note my choices, 2 kitchen stores and one house store...which carries kitchen stuff too. heheeh.

 

[MichelleCarmen]

I voted one place, but in reality, I can't recall if my husband and I actually even bothered to register. If we did, I'm guessing it was The Bon. Since we eloped, we didn't expect gifts and like Sumi, my DH and I had been living together long enough to aquire all we needed long before we purchased our tickets to Vegas.

For my baby showers, I registered at only one place. It's just too much work running around picking out stuff. PLUS, a lot of people ignored my registry and bought what they wanted to give for the baby, so it seems now like it was a waste of time to pick out so many items. If I had a third baby, which I WILL NOT BE DOING

, I wouldn't even register again!

Michelle