H-moon Recap: Are honeymoon registries worth it?

I'm going to start my recaps with stories from our honeymoon.  Mostly because I won't have professional pics or video back for at least a month or so probably.  And I do have pics and video from our honeymoon.  And as I said, there is no chronological order or organization as to how the recaps will come.  :) 

Anyway, way back here I shared about our honeymoon registry which we set up through Honeyfund.  I absolutely loved the idea and friends of ours who used the site during their wedding two years ago said they got at least $1700 by offering this option to guests.  So we were totally on board.

We also set up three other registries:

Bed Bath & Beyond with about 10 items (expensive pots, a sheet set, a mini trash can and a bunch of serving ware and platters for entertaining)
Target with about 25 items that included towels, pots, crock pot, a deep fryer, miscellaneous kitchen items, a sheet set, etc.
Macy's with about 20 or 25 items that included mostly bedding and expensive bath towels and a knife set.

For the most part, we got almost everything on the three store registries.  Not every single item, but at least everything we wanted or needed.  The stuff we didn't get as gifts from the store registries we actually didn't really need anyway so we were kind of glad.  Besides, as you'll see in a minute, we got gift certificates to these stores as well so we could have bought those other items if we wanted.

But when it came to the honeymoon registry, well for whatever reason, that didn't seem to work quite as well as I expected.  The funny thing is, most people just ended up giving us cash or checks for gifts.  Even a lot of the people who gave us honeyfund gifts printed out the gift certificate and placed it with cash in a card.

The day after our wedding, we had a family get together at our home with lunch and just hanging out with our family.  They all took off about 3 pm or so and that left me and Mr Fix It with about 4 or 5 hours to clean up the house, finish packing our suitcases, shower and get the house in order to leave for the airport.  Our flight left at 11 pm the day after the wedding.  We had to run to the bank to take out some cash for the trip but decided that we'd open up our card box and go through all of the cards to see what cash and checks we may have received.  Besides, I didn't want to leave any cash or checks laying around our house for 2 1/2 weeks! 

So as I began to open the cards and make a list of monetary gifts, I began to seriously get teary eyed.  I don't know if it was exhaustion but it truly felt like complete gratitude and appreciation.  I was overwhelmed by the amount of money we received from family and friends.  Even those amazing 11th hour guests I blogged about that I found on Facebook and invited to the wedding just days before gave us ridiculously generous gifts!

I won't share specific numbers, but I can tell you that we received plenty of money to probably pay for our honeymoon in it's entirety (granted we did use air miles and about $800 worth of hotel credits through credit cards to pay for some of our travel expenses). 

Overall, the breakdown of our monetary gifts was this:

11% of the total amount we received was gift cards to Target and Bed, Bath & Beyond
24% of the total amount we received was through the Honeyfund web site (cash, checks and online payments)
65% of the total amount we received was cash or checks

So in the end, out of about 95 party members (this means that out of the 245 people we invited there were about 95 total groups made up of couples/families/singles that showed up and/or gave us a gift), only about 12 of them actually used the Honeyfund site to give us a gift.  The rest were either registry gifts, cash/check or gift certificates.

As much as I loved the idea, I don't think honeymoon registries have taken off quite just yet.  Still, those who did use them to provide a gift left us great messages and truly felt like they were contributing to something fun that they had hand selected for whatever reason.

So are you planning on using a honeymoon registry?  What are your thoughts?  And please, don't use this post or question as a forum to share how you think they are tacky or rude...I don't really care about that because obviously the people who gave us over $1,000 in gifts through the site did not feel that way.

Update:  I should mention that I got 2 honeyfund gifts and at least half of our store registry items at my bridal shower a few months before the wedding!  Also, we got most of our honeyfund.com gifts on the actual day of (or even day after) the wedding.  I guess a lot of people wait until the last minute :)

Honey, honey - give us money!!!

Is that totally inappropriate?  :) 

I want to tell you about one of our gift registries today.  It's through a site called http://www.honeyfund.com/.  I heard about them from a girlfriend who married about a year and a half ago.  I think I may have told her about the idea actually and then she found the site.

Anyway, nowadays, you can opt to register for things like toasters, bedding, appliances, honeymoon travel plans and even a down payment on a new house!  You heard me.  Real Estate Agents can set up accounts for your guests to contribute to your down payment if you'd like.  I don't think I would personally go that far.  But when I heard about the opportunity to register for our honeymoon I was all over it!  Mostly because we don't need a whole ton of things for our new house since we are an 'older' more established couple.   (My girlfriend opted for the honeymoon registry because they moved into a super tiny one bedroom little studio place and didn't have room for a ton of new 'household' items.)

So, the cool thing about a honeymoon registry is that basically, your guests are just giving you cash really.  But they have different options of how to give it to you - through our site, they can pay with cash, check or using a debit or credit card via Paypal.  Of course, through Paypal, you do have to pay approximately a 3% fee on any monies received...but if you get $2,000 in gifts, then you are only paying $60 in fees.  Not bad.  And you might get more money if guests can put it on a credit card?  (You can even select an option to pass the fees onto the guests if you so choose.)

The main reason I wanted to go this route (instead of just letting guests give us cash) was because it allows your guests to feel like they are contributing a specific gift or something fun and exciting for your trip.  My sister's mother-in-law thought our site was a great idea and was excited to give us a gift of $100 yesterday towards our Resort Stay in Bali.  She doesn't have to know that in reality, the $100.00 goes into my checking account and I can use it for whatever I want - a room or groceries.  :)  Here's some of the items we registered for from our site:

It's a simple process to sign up and register for free and you can create a custom web site geared towards your trip - they even have sample vacations to suggest for you!  Here's what our site looks like:

Through honeyfund.com they offer the guests the ability to write out a message that is printed on a gift certificate with the guests' names, message and amount of gift and what they selected to give towards.  The certificates look something like this and they can include them in a card:

So what do you think?  Have you decided to go a similar route?  Did you do any unusual type of registries for your own wedding?