Making a List. . . Checking it Twice

Lessons from our registry:

1. Advice to all brides: Your fiance will love the scanner. Be gracious, share or even give him all scanning duties. However, beware of letting him loose with the scanner. . . .

2. Registering early gives you flexibility to change your minds. Our wedding is in July. We started our registry in February (on Valentine's Day to be exact). This was a good life choice for us. We knew where we will be living after the wedding, but had no idea what colors we really wanted and what style we wanted our home to reflect. Since then I've visited our registry online many times to change things.

3. Have an idea of what you want. Target sent us information that included a book of popular registry items that we were able to discuss and bookmark before visting the store to register. This was a good starting point for us. Friends of ours who recently got married admitted their biggest "engaged fight" was over which plates they would register for. We tried to be prepared in order to avoid these conflicts.

4. Make a list. Like most couples, we registered a number of locations. This was much harder than I anticipated it being. We tried to equally distribute our registry over two mass stores and the only way to keep this straight was to make a list. I'm still afraid we'll end up getting only half of what we need, but at least we didn't register for two of everything.

5. Have fun! I admit that I got stressed out during the process. We are just starting out so we pretty much need everything and it's overwhelming. Overall, we had a blast! We got to pick out everything to start our first home together and we laughed along the way. The picture is B making sure the towels are big enough for him.

6. Beware of bridal guilt. Yes, I think the registry has been the greatest source of my bridal guilt and B felt it too. We know that we need lots of things to help start our home, but we also felt very guilty for asking so much of our guests. We tried to register for things in a variety of prices, but we still felt the guilt of the registry.

7. Check your registry. We had been warned to not register for too many items on sale (as much as it hurt my heart to avoid the sale items) because those often run out very quickly. Since we registered so early we've had to make some minor changes. I check our online registry and we've printed it out in store to make sure that our registry items aren't all "out of stock" or "limited availability."

8. Home Depot does not have scanners. Lesson learned the hard way. We're renovating a house and B's church threw us a "home improvement" themed shower. So we registered at Home Depot. . . except they no longer have scanners (or online access) for their wedding registries. We had a pen and clipboard and copied the UPC numbers from each item. No fun.

9. Wear comfortable shoes. We were able to get most all of our registry done in one very long day. We had to since we live in a small town that's not close to any of the stores we registered at, but many couples break this down into many days. Do what works best for you, but wear comfy shoes.

10. Remember what it's all about. These are gifts that will be given to start your life with your future husband.

What lessons did you learn from registering?

--Love