Experiences are Better Than Things

After considerable thought, Lauren and I have decided to register for a honeymoon in San Francisco instead of registering for housewares. This week, I did a thorough test run of four different honeymoon registry sites. Awesome as this idea may ulitmately end up being, saving time is defintely not a reason to go with a honeymoon registry. While I cannot relieve you of the long, tedious task of deciding on and entering descriptions of wedding gifts, allow me to save you about four hours of registry research with the incisive commentary to follow.

Basically, on a honeymoon registry, you post descriptions of things you want to do on your honeymoon, how much it will cost and how many gifts of what amount you will need to cover the cost. For example, if a hotel room for five nights will cost 1,000 dollars, you describe your awesome digs and ask for 10 gifts of 100 dollars.

At it's worst, a honeymoon registry is a thinly-veiled cash grab. The money that is donated toward the honeymoon is deposited directly into our checking account and we could, in all reality, put it towards anything we want -- groceries and rent come to mind. But, at it's best, a honeymoon registry is an eco-friendly story factory with each guest buying us a little piece of the setting, a character trait or a plot twist in the first chapter of the epic novel that will be our marriage. Besides, dinner for two in the Great Gay Mecca is clearly much more fun than a sheet set or even taking the money and running. As one honeymoon resgistry site says, experiences are better than things.

So. Now that we have addressed the values and ethics, let's turn to the registries.

First, The Big Day. It's run by a travel agency or some kinda travel agency syndicate, which feels a little slimely. They are all about the Better Business Bureau, though, and boast that
59, 700 couples have registered with their site. They charge giftbuyers 3% for credit card processing fees and they charge the couple a 7% service charge on all gifts pruchased, which is pretty typical for all honeymoon regsitry sites. The site design isn't terribly attractive. The colors arent great and there's just a lot of writing and moving things. But, they let you upload photos of your actual destinations and atractions, which made the rough-draft registry much more interesting. They also list the gifts in chronological order, which gives me the opportunity to create the story of the honeymoon in terms of, "On Wednesday, Lauren and I will roll out of bed and walk down the street to Zen Day Spa for our couple's massage. Then we will," blah blah blah. This feature is clearly up my narrative alley.

Next stop was Honeymoon Wishes. The site is more attractive than The Big Day, if a little barfy. They aren't connected to any travel profesionals, but you also can't upload custom photos, having only barfy stock photos to choose from. The Honeymoon charges an 8.85% service charge for gifts under $500.00, which would be all of my gifts. The Honeyfund was started by a couple and is totally free for everyone involved. It's also a pretty good-looking site, but there aren't any images at all to accompany descriptions of your gifts, much less stock photos.

If you want the low down on these honeymoon registry sites from a gay perspective, look for my post on soyoureengaged.com by the end of the week. Kelly, the woman who will be shooting our wedding, has started an on-line clearing house of gay-friendly wedding vendors. She has enlisted the help of a few gay wedding bloggers, myself included, to beef up the site. So You're Engayged looks great and by the end of the year it will be a veritable cornucopia of community, information and ideas. A real contribution to the world of LGBT wedding planning, if I must say so.

At any rate, I am going to lobby for the registry at The Big Day when I present my findings to Lauren. Click here to see the rough draft of our registry. Selling points include the fact that 1.) They will make three electronic transfers to our account before, on and after our wedding according to a schedule we choose. 2.) I can announce the registry via e-postcard 3.) They will host a premium wedsite for 10 dollars a month that includes a copy of our wedsite on a CD, polls, surveys, maps, visitor counter and it can host up to 1,000 photos. But there are literally dozens of features to the site, these are just the ones that appeal to me.

(By the way, a wedding website is one of my most secret guilty desires. You know, one of those totally unnecessary and self-indulgent things people do when they are getting married because they finally have an outlet for all of their supressed vanity and self-absorption? But, please, don't worry, it will stop there; I promise not to get a monogram.)