I often get emails from brides wanting advice on how to save on weddings. Planning a wedding can be both exhilarating and exhausting, but one part of the wedding process that many brides get excited about is conquering the infamous wedding registry. Wedding registries can be a wonderful tool to help friends and family keep track of what you need and want, and while part of the goal of a registry is for family and friends to be able to bless you with gifts for your new life together, there are also ways for you to save as you create your registry!

Top Wedding Registry Tips

Choose Your Registry Carefully

There are several options for wedding registration, but make sure to choose your stores/websites wisely. It can be easy to want to register at many different stores but consolidating your list to about three or less stores makes it more manageable.  In today’s world, it’s far more common to register at sites like Zola or The Knot, which let you easily pull products from many different stores to one unified registry! Just be sure to read the reviews about which one is more reliable or easier for guests to use.  (We’ve heard more good stories about The Knot, but my daughter used Zola with no hiccups.) You can even make a wedding registry on Amazon, which can be a more frugal option for guests.

See my post on wedding registry incentives for more details about all the registry options as well as perks and bonuses.

Think About What You Really Need

You don’t have to have the most expensive items for your new life together. It is nice to have new things, but I would err on the side of practical instead of just buying whatever’s trendy at the moment. You might want to choose really nice bedding for your bed since it’s something you’ll see every day, but when it comes to kitchen items, choose durable items that will last, not just expensive appliances or decor that you’ll never use!

Add FUN Items Your Guests Will Enjoy Buying

On the other hand, don’t just think about practicality…I’ve heard this advice from many newlyweds who didn’t receive the trashcans or storage bins they asked for, but instead were gifted the fancy cake-cutting sets, pretty napkins and fine china.  The reason why? Your guests want to give you things that they find fun, charming, and full of personality.  Not things that are practical, though they know just like you do that those are necessary.  Don’t worry – someone will buy you towels and bedsheets, your guests know that you need those things! But to give them a little encouragement to buy a gift you really want, be sure to pick a fun version.  Instead of Amazon Basics towels, choose something monogrammed or in a particularly lovely color.  Maybe instead of boring white sheets, pick ones with a playful print.  Your guests will feel like they gave you something “you”!

Make Sure to Manually Track Purchases

While registries are a great way to keep track of gifts, some websites/stores tend to have trouble marking gifts as purchased on the registry, so every once in a while, it is a good idea to look over your registry and make sure everything has being marked off as purchased once you have received them. Most registries allow you to manually change the purchase history of items so you can change the items to purchased when the website fails to mark them off. This will help to avoid duplicates and make for an easier return process. Read More→