I had not planned on registering for gifts until at least January, but apparently that was not a good idea. B's relatives had started to prod about registries and china and all that other hoopla, so we bit the bullet. We registered.
We started off our journey on Saturday at Macy's Union Square. Considering that there are 3 giant floors of housewares wonder, we thought this was the best place to go. Plus Macy's is nationwide (making both sides of the family happy) and has an easy online ordering system.
This particular Macy's seems to be the Registry Mecca, as they had a whole section of the 6th floor roped off with 6 computer stations just waiting for all of the pre-nuptial couples of the bay area. I have to admit I was impressed by the view given to the registry department: floor to ceiling view of the square. Nice that they realize just how many dollars we wedding people are generating.
We sat down with a registry specialist and gave her all of our pertinent info (names, date, shipping address), she showed us how to use the scan gun, and we were off. I thought that I had been preparing my whole shopping life for this moment, but we were instantly overwhelmed. The registry area was situated right next to the flatware, and honestly, it all looked the same. Yeah, there were some gilded overly formal ones and more sleek and modern ones -- but all I really wanted was a few forks that matched! The fact that there were about 85 different choices seemed utterly unecessary. So, we ended up picking one that "coordinated" with our china (Kate Spade's Library Lane). It really was a very arbitrary decision.
Our China
Larabee Dot coordinating plates
After we decided on china, we felt a little better about ourselves. Luckily, Macy's Union Square has a food court in the cellar (where there are MORE homegoods), so we had a nice rest stop at Jamba Juice and Tom's Cookies. We definitely needed to refuel.
We found some more fabulous stuff (lots of Martha Stewart Collection - YOU KNOW IT!) and three hours later, we were done.
Being that I want to have a wide variety of items and prices to choose from, we also registered at Target, my trusty friend. You can get pretty much anything you ever wanted at Target (and they have the cutest versions of all of those things!) You can get even more at Target.com. Anyway, given that we had the Macy's experience behind us and my black-belt in TargetShopping -- the second registry was a breeze!
my friend, the Target gun
My favorite part of registering (and totally unexpected) were the free gifts! Macy's gave us a cute red Swiss Army tote bag:
And Target a plastic bag filled with 1) a registry wishbook 2) little cards to stick into your shower invitations 3)my favorite - 5 free wedding song downloads on ITunes.
Awesome! And with a little web-sleuthing, I have found that there are several other freebies through Macy's once people buy things off of your registry (i.e. free baking pans from All Clad) which is on top of their 5% Star Rewards Program (I get a gift card for 5% of the total purchased. BOO YAH!)
I also have to admit that I have been covertly adding to my Amazon.com registry for a few weeks now... so we also have that one. I hope that my friends and family are tech savvy enough to head over there, because it has a lot of super cool things on it.
Ok, so now I need to go take a nap. What a weekend!
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