The Ins and Outs of the Honeymoon Registry
I’ve got weddings on the brain again. First, let me qualify this. I am currently sitting on my couch watching W (the Women Watching Will be Whimpering and Weeping network) as Kate Winslet and Cameron Diaz find vacation love in the Holiday, and tomorrow I’m going to buy my first-ever Bridesmaid dress. Plus, I have a destination wedding group and a handful of honeymoon price enquiries on my desk at work. Put it all together and you can see where my head is at. Anyway, it’s got me thinking about the intricacies of registering for your honeymoon, or, as I like to call it the “either be ready to kick your family’s butts into gear or give up on the whole idea” registry.
I don’t want to sound cynical, because I’m not. It’s just not easy watching the crestfallen Bride and Groom’s faces when they come to book their dream honeymoon with the money contributed by their family and friends only to find that instead of Bali they can only afford to go camping for a week. This has happened with all but one of the honeymoon registries I’ve ever seen, and the reason behind it is simple: to get the best price on a vacation you have to book early, but the vast majority of wedding guests don’t even think about a gift until the night before the wedding. People are lazy. And cheap. Another drawback of the wedding registry is that it gives your guests the added pressure of giving a gift with the price tag still attached – they can’t give too little or they seem cheap, but with the economy being what it is, no one has that much extra lying around anymore, so unless you’re that special they’re not going to break the bank to pay for your vacation. Consequently, most wedding registries get one, maybe two hundred dollars in them by the time the happy couple has to book their trip. All the rest of the contributors will try calling the night before/morning of the wedding only to have me tell them to just give the Bride and Groom the cash at the wedding, because there’s no honeymoon left that needs paying for.
For all you Brides and Grooms out there, this paragraph is for you. The honeymoon registry can be an awesome thing, but you have to be prepared to ride your guests like quarterhorses to get them to pay. The biggest tip I’ve got is to plan ahead. If you’re throwing your wedding together last minute, do not even bother to register for your honeymoon, because you have to book your honeymoon immediately. But if, like most engaged couples, you have a year of planning and save-the-dates and details, then you’re golden. Send out notices and the travel agency’s card with your invitations, and don’t forget to include a contribution deadline. Two months prior to the wedding is a good time frame – not too last minute, but still a reasonable amount of time for you to book a trip at a decent price. The week before this deadline, start sending out reminders. Your agent will help you with this, but just send out a quick email blast, post a notification on your Facebook, and make sure your guests remember that if they miss this date, they should start shopping for an actual physical gift instead. To go along with this, the Bride and Groom have to keep their expectations realistic. When caught up in the throwes of wedding fever, it can be so easy to imagine spending your most important vacation ever on an idyllic south pacific island in an overwater bungalow (and it’s always an overwater bungalow in these fantasies) , ignoring the CAD$1000.00 per night price tag because you assume your family will pay for it. Please, please have a backup, cheaper but still fantastic, plan, just in case you actually have to foot the bill yourself. You don’t need the last minute panic of re-planning your honeymoon combined with the last minute scrambling for the cash and all the other last minute details you have to sort through.
Registering for your honeymoon is a great thing, but it’s not as easy as pointing the little bepper gun at the latest set of butter knives at the Bay. It takes a bit of coordingation on the part of the the couple, the guests and the agent, as well as a realistic outlook. If you’ve got all this, your honeymoon is going to be awesome.