Guide to Planning Your Wedding Registry

I could talk about weddings all day, every day. I absolutely love them. I had so much fun planning our wedding and even when we had to completely “re-plan” on extremely short notice, I was on such a creative high just soaking up all the details. I know multiple sweet ladies who recently said “yes” and it got me thinking, I have so many more wedding-related posts I could write for the blog to provide tips and ideas!

We get asked a lot if we are planning to have a big “second” wedding (like the wedding we originally planned) sometime next year and the answer is no. It just doesn’t align with our plans and the reality is, we’re unsure when all of this pandemic stuff will end. We were able to get a large chunk of money back from vendors we didn’t get to use and that was such a blessing, but as for a “second wedding” like many couples in our shoes are opting to do, we decided that wasn’t going to be part of our story. Although, I haven’t thrown out the idea of throwing a fancy vow-renewal one day, years from now, and pull out all the stops for an elegant celebration of our love and commitment.

Moving on… If you’re recently engaged or hoping to be one day, this post is my letter to you!! 😉 The wedding registry tends to be one of the fun but sometimes confusing or daunting tasks during the engagement season so I am sharing this guide to answer some bridal questions. 

Registry 101

There are no rules. If you want to register for fine china, go for it. If you think that’s silly, don’t. Maybe you really want a dragon statue for your front yard, I don’t know maybe that’s extreme, but my point is, don’t feel like you have to register for a bunch of stuff you don’t actually think you would ever use, just because your aunt says it’s necessary.

There’s nothing out there saying you have to make a registry at all, but just know that it’s helpful for both you and the guests. And guests truly expect a registry. It’s super great for them because it takes the guess work out of a time when gifts are a tradition. There are so few times people will bring you gifts by the masses, at least as an adult, so enjoy it!! And keep in mind that even with a registry, you’ll receive gifts you didn’t ask for, but you cut the probability of unwanted things substantially by creating a registry full of items you’d love to possess! Don’t skimp because people like to have options! 

Where to Register

From our experience, Amazon is a FOR SURE place to register.

I would also HIGHLY suggest registering at The Container Store. There are so many super practical items at The Container Store that aren’t the most “exciting” (unless you love organizing), but they’re things that you will for sure use and you’ll be so happy to not have to purchase yourself!

Places like Target and Walmart are good too because it’s just so easy for guests no matter their budget. Additionally, if you end up with items from here that are either duplicates or things you decide you don’t need, it’s easy to exchange and these are stores you’re guaranteed to spend money at eventually.

Other registry needs… I had a separate registry through My Registry that was private and actually password-protected, which my matron of honor sent out the link and info to the ladies invited to my bachelorette party so that I could provide suggestions and sizes of what I wanted for the personal shower part of the party. This kept it all discreet. You don’t have to make a registry for that party, it was just something I wanted to do for the sake of sizes, color preference, and what not.

Beyond that, I think it is important to think about where people, especially older family members will want to shop for you. We had a significant number of guests who had better access to say a JCPenney than Macy’s or other large department stores, and knowing that some of those guests would much prefer shopping in a store than online, I made sure we were registered for some items from JCPenney.

We used Zola to group items from several retailers in one place. This was nice in the since that I could register for items found on sites that didn’t offer their own registry options. But it just didn’t work out like I thought it would.

Why I Don’t Recommend Zola

Zola was disappointing and looking back I wouldn’t have registered through them. I was drawn to the fact that you could register for many stores and it would list all items in one place, however we ran into some issues that made it kind of a pain. For instance, guests told us they had a difficult time determining what color we wanted (towels) and that the pricing was odd, plus it wasn’t ideal for them because it wanted them to purchase some items through their site, provide information to Zola they didn’t want to provide, etc. When I was setting up our Zola account, I was under the impression that I could choose some of those settings for our registry but either I didn’t do something correctly or something went wrong. There’s a way to include details like color and what not, but it was apparently difficult for people to navigate. Either way, it just wasn’t user-friendly for guests and that means we didn’t get much of anything from that registry. And in our case, we only registered through Amazon and Zola (Zola registry of course included items from several stores) but where we weren’t registered with each of the retailers independently of Zola, basically all we received was from the Amazon registry.

Please don’t think I’m complaining about our gifts, because I’m not, we were soooo very blessed with a tremendous outpouring of love in the form of gifts and gift cards and we’re incredibly grateful. My goal here is to simply shed light on our experience and the feedback of our guests to aide you in making your own decision.

And I want to add that 1) I know multiple friends who used Zola for their wedding registries and loved it! And 2) I didn’t reach out to Zola for help with these issues – mainly because I just did not have a moment to spend on that when we were trying to do all the things at that point in engagement/pre-move across the country.

Zola offers other services beyond the registry, so I wouldn’t completely rule them out (like free websites and more) but it just wasn’t ideal for our guests and therefore it’s not what I would recommend using for the registry part of your wedding planning.

There are other similar registry options that allow you to register from websites that don’t offer that service or just for the purpose of housing everything in one place. I know for a fact my sister used something else and I think I’ll interview her as part of my next registry-related post to provide another perspective and insight on another platform.

What to Include on Your Registry

So this is a huge topic, and given how lengthy this post will be without the nitty gritty details on WHAT to register for, I’ve decided to do a full post about items I registered for, items I would recommend or other pieces that would make great registry inclusions. So stay tuned, that post will be up in the coming days. But what we can cover now: categories… Break it down by rooms or type of good: Small appliances and gadgets, kitchenware, entertainment ware, bedding, bath and linens, luggage, home organization, garage or outdoors.

Consult your friends and family! Maybe the hottest kitchen appliance is something none of your friends ever used after receiving it from their registry. Maybe there’s something super random you would’ve never thought about that your mom swears by and has loved for decades since her own wedding.

When to Register

You can register as early into your engagement season as you’d like. The important thing is to make sure you’re giving anyone hosting a shower or party for you, enough advance notice that they have time to print details on any invitations that might be sent. So think about completing it a couple months before your first shower at the latest. (If possible, obviously it all depends on your wedding timeline!)

Informing Your Guests About Your Registry

We used Mint to create and host our wedding website. This was a great tool to house all the important information guests need. We had a page dedicated to the registry, and in our situation, explaining why our registry had been edited down + why we asked for gift cards if possible (we found out in the middle of our engagement that we’d be moving and thus downsizing to a tiny Manhattan apartment, meaning errythangg had to GO!) You’ll want to include this information on the website definitely, but also possibly on your printed save the dates and shower invitations. You can also simply list the URL of where this information can be found on your wedding website to cut down on text.

So that wraps it up for this portion of registry-talk lol! Please let me know your questions!! Work is already underway on a future post detailing the items I recommend putting on your registry! Stay tuned 😊