Bride-to-be Blogger Carly: Should We Use a Honeymoon Registry?


Bride-to-be Blogger Carly: Should We Use a Honeymoon Registry?

Hemera

Sean and I have yet to decide on our honeymoon destination and complete our gift registry. However, we are in the process of doing both—and are even considering combining the two to create a honeymoon gift registry.

While at a friend’s wedding this summer, we learned about online honeymoon registries. These friends had set up an account through HoneyFund.com where they could register for various honeymoon activities that guests could “purchase” for them. So, rather than giving cash, a guest might give an experience. For instance, say the couple wanted to take a sailboat ride to snorkel with some sea turtles. They would post this experience to their honeymoon registry and a guest could then buy that as their wedding gift. Gifts can range from a bottle of champagne to airline tickets, and anything in between. For higher ticket items, such as airfare or hotel stays, the items can be broken into smaller units, much like buying one place setting rather than all eight.

Sounds pretty cool, right?

Since Sean and I are very much looking forward to our honeymoon, we decided this honeymoon registry is definitely something we want to look into. And, surprisingly (to me anyhow), there are tons of honeymoon registry sites to choose from, but the basic structure is the same. Essentially, you create a website and then list anything and everything you’d want to do on your honeymoon. Much like a typical gift registry, this honeymoon wish list would appear with descriptions of and pricing for each requested item. The shopper would select and pay for the gift on the registry site, and the couple would be notified of this purchase.

So this all sounds pretty awesome, and it would be nice to go on our honeymoon knowing that the cost wouldn’t completely fall to us. However, it seems that there are some down sides to consider:

  • Guests can purchase registry items in two ways: by paying directly into a PayPal account, or by using a credit card. Here’s the catch: It appears that most, if not all, of these registry sites will charge a transaction fee, so that their $50 bottle of champagne is actually going to run them $55.00.
  • The other slight downside is the honeymoon pre-planning that would be required to create a registry. We are busy enough as it is with our wedding planning. And while we will certainly do some research about our honeymoon destination before take-off, I’m not sure we’ll want to plan everything out in advance, as we really like to explore and take adventures as they come.
  • Finally, guests may not even realize we created this registry and may just give us cash anyway. In the instance where we first learned about honeymoon registries, we hadn’t a clue that the couple had set-up such a site. Why? Because we tend to give money as our gift, and never even thought to check out the registry. I’m assuming we aren’t alone in that practice.

So, right now we see some definite pros and potential cons with creating a honeymoon registry and we’d love your feedback. Did you use a honeymoon registry? If so, which one? If not, why?

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