First World Problems

November 9, 2011 12:03 PM

Help me find the Ultimate Special Snowflake Online Gift Registry Website.

I'm getting married. I already live with my partner and we already have a lot of stuff in our not-very-big apartment and honestly we don't need much of anything you typically find on a "wedding registry."

What I would really like is to have guests be able to partially contribute to experiences or pricey gifts (new bed!), as you can on SimpleRegistry.com.

AND I would like to satisfy those don't "get" SimpleRegisty and want to put their hands on an actual physical gift that they can wrap themselves, like when you register at a brick and mortar store (Macy's or Target or the like).

AND I would like the all-inclusiveness of Amazon's wishlists, which allow you to add a product from any website (we'd love to get some really cool art from Etsy).

AND I would like this to all be in one place with accountability for gifts bought so that we don't end up with double (though of course there are worse problems to have).

Does my dream registry exist? How do I satisfy everyone (including my partner and myself)?

posted by kidsleepy to shopping (3 answers total)

We did something like this when we got married 14 years ago. We had a family friend send out a letter with items and prices ranging from $5 to $50. We honeymooned in Maine so we chose things like bike rentals in Acadia, lobster rolls for 2, dinner at a restaurant in Camden, shopping at LLBean, etc. The family friend kept track of who did what so when we were in Maine we took pictures of us on the bikes, in the kayaks, etc. and sent them with thank you notes. People who wanted to spend more bought two or more items on the list. Our friend also put several joke items like bail money etc. (someone actually gave us $500 bail money!) Everyone enjoyed it and loved the idea that they were along with us on our honeymoon.

The key part of this though was that it came from our friend, not us, and we didn't send the list out to everyone. Just the ones we thought would have fun with it.
posted by Gusaroo at 1:29 PM on November 9, 2011

You should not worry about getting duplicates with more than one registry. You will add each item only once, so it will only show up on one registry. Sign up for SimpleRegistry.com and also a place like giftregistry360.com which lets you add things from anywhere (Amazon, Etsy, etc.) but also includes Macy's, Target, Crate & Barrel and Home Depot.

Be prepared for things to not work out correctly no matter how organized you are. Someone might forget to have the item checked off the registry or the cashier may do it incorrectly. Duplicates are not a big deal since gift receipts are almost always included.
posted by soelo at 2:26 PM on November 9, 2011

We did something like this ourselves. I created a basic, HTML website and setup a PayPal Shopping cart system on the site (I had a domain and space with doteasy.com at the time). It was actually pretty simple and PayPal was pretty cool in that you could setup inventory like "I want one of these and two of these." Once the limit was hit, it would say SOLD OUT.

This was very successful for us and we had guests buy us "1 Night Hotel Stay", "Zip Lining Trip", "Fancy Dinner Out", etc. Ultimately, it was just cash in our checking account that we used for these things.

On that same webpage you could have links to your other registries for the more "traditional" folks.
posted by bwilms at 2:39 PM on November 9, 2011