7 Reasons not to Have a Wedding Registry

If you were invited to our wedding, you would remember that we didn't have a gift registry.

A lot of people were on the fence with me about that.  I heard:

"You'll get seven crockpots/vases/toasters etc"

"You're doing a disservice for people that want to get you a gift"

"You won't get what you want"

And other stuff.


I convinced Dave that we shouldn't register for gifts.  My reasons were as follows:

• Registering eliminates the surprise factor for the recipient.  

• Registering eliminates the creativity and imagination factor for the giver.  

• Registering gives away how much people spent on your gift.

• Registering limits the giver's shopping options as well as ours.  I love many stores...I couldn't get myself to pick "the one" store to get all our things that are essential for married life, as told by sales associates everywhere.  Truth is...the ONLY thing that is essential for your married life is your BRIDEGROOM.  

• People who REALLY want to get you a gift, do want to get you something you like.  

• Anything we got as a gift was good; we didn't have anything homey since we were both living at home with our families prior to marriage. 

• I wanted to test out a theory I made up:  that being, we were less likely to receive duplicates by not registering.  If we registered for a crockpot, chances are somebody is going to look for one similar to the one on our registry and get one that's cheaper.  That's how people get stuck with a ton of duplicates, according to yours truly.  

We ended up with a butt load of gifts. After returning from our honeymoon, it took us FOR-EH-VAH to carry our gifts from the car to the apartment...the elders were at the apartment complex and helped us carry gifts to our place but it still took a while!  It took a while to open all of our presents too, it was long but so much fun!  So many wonderful surprises!!!

We received a ton of cash gifts and gift cards.  We never mentioned anything about wanting monetary gifts (you shouldn't ask for money anyway) and it helped us get pretty much everything else that we still needed.

We also got a lot of beautiful gifts that we couldn't have thought of ourselves had we registered.

The only duplicates we got were:

• 2 vacuums

• 2 handmixers

• 2 sets of knives

• ZERO crockpots.  I received one for my birthday later though :)

We kept and returned one of each duplicate.

That's what happened when we didn't register for wedding gifts!  

Did couples really end up with seven toasters before wedding registries were invented??