Wedding season is in full force right now. If you are planning your marriage or are recently married, congratulations! One of the trickiest parts of the wedding is the wedding registry. Do you ask for gifts or just cash? I’ll walk you through my experience and some things to think about when you are creating your wedding registry.

being in wedding

The Registry: Gifts or Cash

While it is becoming more and more common to simply ask for cash when you get married, many still see this as inappropriate or tacky. For this reason, even if you want cash, you should still come up with a few items you would like to get and then create a registry.

The Keys For Your Registry

When it comes to creating your registry, make sure you follow my tips. There are many pitfalls you can fall into. These tips will help lessen those chances.

Don’t Get Caught Up: It is all too easy to go crazy when creating your wedding registry. You get caught up in the idea that others will be buying you things and as a result, you find ways to justify adding the extra dinner plate to your registry. Even worse, you could have the person at the store following you around, convincing you to add more to your registry. After all, they want to make sure their store sells as much as it can.

Because of this, it is important to take your time and think things through. Even then, you will add items you really don’t need. My wife and I did this. We got caught up in the moment and added a handful of useless to us items. To resolve this, we pulled out the sheet that listed everything a week later and with clearer heads, removed many of these items.

What Do You Need: For my wife and me, we married in our mid-30’s. We both had our own house and they were fully furnished. Put another way, we had most all of what we wanted. But, there were some things, that even after combining our things, we still wanted, like new towels and some larger bowls for serving family style dinners. So, we added these to the list. We skipped the fine China because we don’t plan on really using that type of dinnerware, so it would be a waste to us. Make it a point to really think about what you need and then add that to your registry.

Register Where It Makes Sense: Most people will register at Bed, Bath & Beyond or similar stores. This is great if you need things from these stores. But don’t be nervous about registering at other types of stores as well. Maybe you need a new push lawn mower or want a grill? Last time I checked, Bed, Bath & Beyond didn’t carry these items. Don’t limit yourself to just one store. You can register at a few stores so you get what you want.

Only Add What You Need (If You Want Mostly Cash): As I mentioned above, my wife and I didn’t need that much in terms of house ware items. When we finished our registry, the person handling it told us our list was on the thin side and we should add a lot more to it. She then offered to go around the store and point things out! We declined because what we really wanted was cash.

By creating a registry with the things we needed, we were likely to get only the things we really wanted and we sent the subtle hint to our guests that we wanted cash. When it came time for the wedding, the majority of our gifts were cash.

Return Items: Of course, even with a limited registry, guests still got us things that weren’t on the list, or got us too many of certain items. Its life and it is bound to happen. We made it a point to return these items. Unfortunately we only could get a gift card for the items, but having the cash in a gift card to buy something we really needed was better than things taking up space that would never be used.

Final Thoughts

When creating your wedding registry, there are all sorts of pitfalls along the way. It’s easy to get caught up in the moment and add things you don’t need. Stay rational and make sure you don’t get talked into things. Finally, at the end of the day, chances are you will most likely get cash, regardless if that is what you want or not. Most guests find it easier to carry a card with a check in it to the wedding reception than a box that contains an un-assembled grill.