Pre-Registering for Gifts

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With all the stress and fuss that goes into planning a wedding, registering for gifts is a rather enjoyable reprieve. You pick your favorite stores, and then you and your sweetie get to walk around with a magic scanner and zap! You now have a giant wish list of everything you’ve ever wanted for your home, and the kicker is that people are actually going to buy these things for you.

But before you get too caught up in the excitement and end up with a full set of human-sized ceramic lawn gnomes or six Hypercolor hand towels, it’s a good idea to invest in a little mental preparation.

“Couples should look to the future when selecting items for their registry,” says Hilleary Kehrli, a spokeswoman for Williams-Sonoma. “Although you may live in a small apartment now, the purchase of your first home may be on the horizon,” she says. “It’s important to select items and quantities that reflect the entertaining and living needs of your future together.”

When Tara Johnson-Medinger, the former events director for the Shogren House Museum, a popular wedding venue in Portland, Ore., became engaged herself in 2002, she and her fiancé took some time to talk about what they truly wanted.

“We were getting married in our early 30s, so we actually already had a lot of things,” says Johnson-Medinger, “but we looked at this as an opportunity to refresh. It was time to get rid of the college-age things that we had been lugging around for years. We registered for replacements – traditional items like a full set of dishes and matching silverware.”

According to Kehrli, traditional choices usually include cookware, electric appliances such as stand mixers, blenders, waffle makers, coffee makers, cutlery and dinnerware, as well as linens for the bedroom and bathroom. Recently, she says, slow cookers and panini presses have also been especially popular choices.

But with all the fabulous options out there, some couples can get overwhelmed. To help calm nerves and bring focus to the task, Kehrli recommends thinking about what you enjoy doing and how this applies to your future together.

“Key questions to consider are, ‘Am I an avid cook?’” points out Kehrli. “‘Am I a beginner with a passion to learn?’ ‘Someone who loves to entertain?’”

Focusing on your interests can help you determine what practical gifts are best suited to your needs. If you need a little more guidance, you can attend in-store bridal registry events, or meet with bridal sales associates who can provide detailed information on specific products and make recommendations. And if couples just don’t need the more traditional items, they can always register for items that suit their needs and lifestyle at places like REI or Dick’s.

No matter what stores you select, Johnson-Medinger recommends looking into the system for registry before you commit. It is much easier if you can scan items rather than having to write them down, it is easier on your guests if there is an online purchasing option and you want to make sure the store offers a range of options appropriate for the income of your friends and family.

In addition to registering, Johnson-Medinger and her fiancé also created a personal Web site. The site contained information about their wedding and fun stories about how they met, but it also noted some larger items they were in need of, such as a couch, luggage and fun activities they could do on their honeymoon in Hawaii, like a helicopter ride. They tastefully suggested that if people would like to give a gift, they could simply contribute to these bigger, special items.

“The gifts were great,” says Johnson-Medinger, “however, I really just wanted people to come to the wedding. I had friends flying in from all over the country; I tried to make it clear that just their presence was a gift.”

Whether it’s people, places or things, gifts are a part of weddings. Gift registries make it easy to acquire those important, often timeless items for the home, from premium kitchen cookware to luxury bed and bath items. Spend some time thinking about what you need and want, even if it’s a lawn gnome, and then zap, zap, zap away.

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