Registering CAN Be Easy!

Or, our unconventional registry that turned conventional....

A while ago I showed you all how I made our own honeymoon registry on our wedding website using PayPal, but I thought I'd touch on the alternate registry we did through Amazon.com as well.

I've read a lot of blog posts about the stress of registering. The guilt, the indecision, the overwhelming fear of the registry gun, the pressure from the store representative to put massively expensive items on your registry....the list goes on and on. But for us (er, I, since Mr. Cola didn't really want to be bothered with this) it was pretty dang easy!

It all started with me sitting on my couch with my laptop, and I thought to myself, "Gee, what can I register us for that we'll actually use? We have a kitchen and home full of stuff already, it's not the newest stuff, but we already have it!"

So I started adding less conventional registry items we could really use, like Kelty 20-Degree Sleeping Bags, camping headlamps, a pool cue holder, Washington State Cougars Billiard Balls, and a Dual-Zone 18-Bottle Ventilated Wine Cooler.



(pictures taken from the Amazon listings)

But then I started thinking, "Well, Mr. C really needs a new suitcase....and oh! I wonder if they have any cool garlic peeling devices....or maybe a cupcake carrier for taking them to work..." and promptly added a new set of luggage, several garlic peeling items, and several cupcake accessories to the registry.



{Sources from left to right, top row: Luggage Set, Garlic Peeler, Garlic Twist, bottom row: Cupcake Courier, Mini Muffin (Cupcake!) Pan, Regular Muffin (Cupcake!) Pan}

And then when I showed Mr. C how our registry was coming along, to see if he wanted to add or delete anything, he insisted that we must register for a new "grilled cheese pan." Grilled cheese sandwiches are his specialty, and our old pan from college was pretty warped, so I added a new one to the registry.
{Source: Revere Polished Aluminum 11-Inch Nonstick Square Frying Pan}

From here it just started going downhill into boring old conventional registry-land. I was in the cookware section now, and in no time a Rachael Ray 10-Piece Cook Set, 6-Quart Programmable Slow Cooker, Magic Bullet Deluxe, and quite a few other random kitchen gadgets were added.

Around this time is when I discovered the Universal Registry, which allows you to add anything from any website to your Amazon registry, so it's all in one place for your guests. It was all over then! I was bit by the registering bug and added new bedding from Linens and Things (click the description link on these for the photo source).


Adirondack bench, coffee table, 2 chairs with ottomans and 2 side tables, from Adirondack Chair Showroom, 'cause I would love some nice outdoor furniture:


And then I had to go and decide that maybe the hand-me-down, not-so-pretty stoneware plates we've had for 10 years needed to be upgraded, so I registered for this lovely set of dishes, along with matching platters and salt and pepper shakers, by Pfaltzgraff:


Which only led to me thinking that since we don't have a dining room table, maybe we needed one to put these pretty new dishes on. So I hit up Ikea and added an expandable table, 6 matching chairs, and a sideboard.

Altogether we have 46 items on our Amazon registry, or a little over $3,000 worth of stuff. That's about $30 per person for our 100 person guest list, so I'm guessing that's about right, combined with our honeymoon registry. But do we really care if we get any, or all of this stuff? Not really! Shopping online for everything was fun for me, and now we have a list of stuff already researched and flagged for whenever we might want to buy this stuff for ourselves.

So all in all, this is one wedding blogger who found the registering process nothing but fun and easy! No guilt because, well, if people don't want to get us something we registered for, they won't, no big deal. It wasn't hard to pick things because I'm an online shopping addict. And we never went to a store, so we didn't have to deal with any of that drama either.

How did registering turn out for you? And do you enjoy adding/deleting/playing with your registry over the months leading up to your wedding as much as I do? :)