D and I finally went out on the weekend and registered for wedding gifts. It was fun but tedious. It was something I had been looking forward to for a while - probably because we've been engaged for a while and it feels like I've been reading about other people's registries forever!
We decided on two stores to register at: The Bay (which is a huge Canadian department store) and Crate & Barrel (which just has nice stuff!). We set aside an afternoon and headed to the mall to get it done. We decided to go to the Bay first, because they have tons of stuff and Crate & Barrel would be for more of the fun, gadget-y things. After sitting through their 'spiel' we were given the gun and ready to go! The very first thing I scanned was at the top of my list - something I have been lusting over for YEARS. Now, I know this has been overdone when it comes to registries nowadays, but don't hate! This was my first item:
Hello, Lover!
I am beyond excited to have this baby sitting proudly on my kitchen counter. And considering I don't even know where I'll be living in a few months, this is a big deal!
The Bay gave us this booklet with a ridiculous checklist of things for the home. D and I have lived together before, but most of our items were either hand-me-downs or the cheapest of the cheap. That being said, even though we need a lot of stuff, we definitely didn't need everything that was suggested in their booklet. So Registry Advice #1: Don't scan things you need if you think you don't need it. Of course the stores want you to buy it - More money for them! We made a list before we left of things we needed so we wouldn't be tempted by what we saw in stores.
After scanning my beloved stand-mixer, we moved through the small appliances and other kitchen things, bedroom, bathroom, etc. I'm not going to lie - creating a registry is stressful. We don't know where we will be living in a few months - D is coming back to Ottawa, so obviously it will be somewhere together, but we don't know if it's going to be an apartment, a house, how many bedrooms we'll have... we don't even know what our furniture will look like! (Except that it will likely be crappy hand-me-downs for a while...) So, trying to envision what our kitchen will look like, what our bedroom will look like, and trying to pick a 'style'... it was hard! I think we did an okay job, but I guess we will have to see.
It took us a few hours to finish our registry at the Bay. We took a snack break in the middle (during which D scanned some chocolate milk onto our registry - hilarious!) and then kept going. We didn't get everything we needed in that one trip, but it is pretty easy to go back and add things - we still have time. After that, we quickly went to Crate & Barrel and filled in what we still needed or duplicates of things we liked better. The thing I really liked about the Crate & Barrel registry is that you can sit at home and peruse their website, and then just call to add things to the registry. At the Bay, you can remove or change the quantity of items online, but you can't add anything new.
So overall, it was a pretty fun experience. The only stress came from not wanting to seem like jerks asking for ridiculous, expensive things. We tried to put a variety of things on both registries - both big ticket and less expensive items. The best thing was we didn't get into any fights about things - there were certain items I cared about more, and things he cared about more, so we just made compromises. Easy, peasy!
So, registries... fun, or not so much? What do you think?
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