Using Your Honeymoon Registry

 We strongly recommend keeping your registry items at  the low end of the price range.

If you’ve got a lot of items priced at $75 to $150, you’re effectively telling your guests you expect most of them to spend that much on your gift. It doesn’t matter that they probably will spend that much (the average we see on our registries is about $115 per gift)…it’s the message you’re sending. And, you’re probably going to have a number of guests who really can only afford $25 or $40…who love you just as much! Don’t make them feel bad by having most of the items on your registry priced outside their price range. 

Another thing: you don’t necessarily have to ask for ALL the money! The overwater bungalow in our previous example isn’t going to be $125/night (more like $325/night…so if you find one for $125/night, BOOK IT! 🙂 But give your guests the opportunity to buy a big chunk of it as their gift to you. Just make sure that you make the gift item relate to a real, specific part of your honeymoon (e.g. “one night”). They’ll want to give you something specific, not a dollar amounttoward something. 

Make sure you only put things on your registry that you really want, or things you really want to do. This applies to registries for “things” as well as your honeymoon. It’s really not right for you to ask a guest to buy you something, then return it and just keep the cash…similarly, it’s not right to have Uncle Tim and Aunt Mary buy you the Dolphin Experience then not go. Their gift to you was the experience, not the cash. But what if the gift is broken down into several items, and not all are bought? that brings us to the next question… 

Sometimes you’ll have a gift that you’ve broken down into several items, and not all get bought. Here’s an example: Helicopter tour of Kauai…you might have 2 items, each one representing one of your tickets for the ride. (A helicopter ride tends to be expensive, so by breaking it into one ticket for each of you, you make more of a proper gift-sized item for someone to buy.) 

Now what if only 1 ticket is bought? You’ve got two choices: either you pay for the other ticket yourself (if you can afford it), or you use the cash for something else similar. 

If you use the cash for something else, you owe it to your wedding guest to tell them the truthin your thank-you note. Tell them that you appreciate their generous gift, but decided to use it for a different experience that appealed to you more once you arrived at your honeymoon destination (maybe use it for a less expensive adventure like a snorkel trip). I’m not “Miss Manners”, but I think if you get really stuck and can’t afford to cover the other ticket yourself, this is probably a much more graceful way to deal with the situation than to say “too bad nobody bought the other ticket”, as they may interpret this as saying they should have bought both…which isn’t fair to them. 

While you’re on your trip, make sure you take pictures of yourselves enjoying each experience that was bought for you on your registry. If you can’t take a picture exactly of the two of you (let’s say it’s a beachside massage), take a picture related to the activity (perhaps the view from the massage tent by the beach). But this isn’t just for your honeymoon photo album… 

Your wedding guest bought you something personal, romantic, and specific…complete the circle by showing them how beautiful, romantic, and memorable it really was for you with a photo. With each hand-written thank-you note, include a photo related to the gift that your guest bought. Remember, it’s not that the guest really wants to be thanked (although they will, a bit!)–what’s most important is that they know that their gift to you really meant something to you. A photo of you two enjoying their gift helps tell them exactly that.