Our Registry Picks

We ended up registering at three different places. We wanted to give people plenty of options. One of those options was going to be Macy's, but we had a terrible time trying to register there. The women who was helping us took forever signing us up, the scanner was not user friendly, the layout of the store was terrible, and we found the stuff we were looking at elsewhere for better prices. So we decided to dump Macy's. Instead we went with:

Image via www.linneyville.com

I really love this store. It was super easy to sign up online, and when we went into the store there was no hassle getting us a scanner. We went with Bed Bath & Beyond for guests who actually want to go into a store and buy us a gift. I still have relatives that are leery of online shopping. There are also plenty of store locations in both New York and California. My personal favorite registry item from BB&B is:

Image via keurig.com 

The Keurig. I only drink about one cup of coffee a day, so for me it's better than brewing a whole pot. Mr. Castle drinks a lot more than I do, but with it only taking one minute to brew, I think we'll be fine.

Our second registry is:

Image via Honeyfund.com

We decided to go with Honeyfund because we don't really need that much household stuff. We also don't really have that much space in our little apartment for a lot of new stuff. It's also a good way to prevent us from having to bring a lot of gifts back with us to NY. I know some people don't like Honeymoon registries because they feel like its asking for money, but everyone we've talked to about it thinks it's pretty cool. We're registering mostly for experiences, dinners, museums, so hopefully no one will be offended. I am most excited about some of the museums we will be going to on our honeymoon...

Image via traveling-piont.blogspot.com

I personally think its a great gift to give someone something that they will enjoy on their honeymoon. You could even take a picture of you and your groom enjoying that experience and include it in the thank you card. :)

Lastly we decided to add:

Image via amazon.com 

Did you know you can add an item from any website onto your amazon registry? It's pretty awesome. You download a bookmark for your browser toolbar that has the amazon "a" on it. Let's say you're on Antropologie's website and you see some cute dishes you wish you could register for. Well, all you do is click the amazon "a" button and select add to registry. It's awesome! I feel like there are now sooo many possibilities!

I'm curious to see which registry will get the most attention. I'm glad we gave people a lot of options. I personally like looking at people's different registries and seeing the different kinds of things they registered for. I think the more diverse your registry the more it tells people about you as a couple.

Where did you register? Did you give a lot of options or keep it simple?

Registry Woes...

Before I talk about where we registered and what we registered for, I would like to discuss a looming cloud hovering over our registering experience. As most of you are aware we live in New York City but we are getting married in Califonia. So when we talk about registering it always comes back to this question: How are we going to get gifts back to New York?

Image via onewed.com

The easy answer would be, we'll ship them back, or just have people send them to New York to begin with. I wish it were that simple. We live in a pretty large apartment building, and we live on the 4th floor. We have a hard time getting packages delivered to us period. Either we're not home, because we both work pretty full time, so UPS or FedEX can't deliver them without a signature. Or we are home but the post office doesn't want to walk up four flights of stairs so instead of even attempting to deliver something they put a slip in our mailbox to come pick it up at the post office. And an even worse scenario that has happened, we buzz them in and they just leave our package on the first floor by the mailboxes. I wish I could say I trusted my neighbors, but unfortunately I don't.

(source)

None of these options seem to work well for us...

So what can we do? We could have our gifts sent to my Mom's house in California where they have a better chance of getting delivered and they won't get stolen. But then how will we get them back to NY? We can't ship them because then we run into the same problem...We could just not register and tell people to give us gift cards or do a honeymoon registry which (spoiler alert!) we are. But I really want the experience of registering and receiving actual gifts that we can look back on and say, "Oh those were a wedding gift."

So I am at a loss. I really don't know what our best option is. Someone suggested we get a PO Box and have things delivered there, but I found out UPS and FedEx will not deliver to PO boxes. My thought as of now is to just have things sent to my Mom's address. We are not registering for that many large items, so we can try and carry as much possible back with us to NY, and then ship anything we can't bring back via the post office. At least we know the post office won't even try and deliver anything. We'll end up having to go pick it up, which is a hassle, but it's better than them not getting delivered, or worse getting stolen while left downstairs...

Any other suggestions would be awesome. Anyone else run into this problem?