Honeymoon Wedding Registry

Did anyone register for their honeymoon instead of things for the house? How did that work for you?
FH and I live together, we both had and have houses of our own filled with stuff, so house stuff needed is minimal. I keep reading about the Honeymoon registry and wondering about real experiences.
Thanks!

i have a HM registry and a 'regular' one ...

ultimately, you just get the money that was given (you can use it however you want, it doesn't have to be the way that the person intended) ... so it's like asking for cash, in a way

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Posted by AwaitingAugust

i have a HM registry and a 'regular' one ...

ultimately, you just get the money that was given (you can use it however you want, it doesn't have to be the way that the person intended) ... so it's like asking for cash, in a way

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Did you set yours up through a travel agent? How did you set it up? Do you have to have your honeymoon booked in order to set it up?

We did ours through a website called travelersjoy.com -- our friends had done it a year earlier and we thought it was a great option and a wonderful way to get our friends and family involved in our HM!

I'd be happy to send you the link to it if you want to see.

Basically, how it works is that you totally customize it yourself. You put in the photos, the titles for the 'items' or experiences, and the prices. Friends and family 'purchase' your items through the website with a credit card, and you get the money whenever you want. Either as a check from traveler's joy or wire transfer if you'd like. They do take a 7.5% (i think?) fee but that's less than tax, which is how I thought of it.

We had the most amazing honeymoon and did things like took a cooking class in Paris that I would never had done if my dad's cousin hadn't purchased it for us! It was also a great way to plan our HM activities since you needed to plan in advance to create the registry. However, since you're just getting a check for the lump sum in the end, you aren't forced to do everything, even if it was purchased.

Like a friend bought us 'french cheese' that was on our registry, but I didn't end up getting any... I think I got some extra chocolate instead.

HTH! Feel free to FM if you have any other questions about it!

We also registered at BB&B for some items, which was a good second option, especially for people who were getting us gifts after the wedding.

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Posted by MissingLI

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Posted by AwaitingAugust

i have a HM registry and a 'regular' one ...

ultimately, you just get the money that was given (you can use it however you want, it doesn't have to be the way that the person intended) ... so it's like asking for cash, in a way

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Did you set yours up through a travel agent? How did you set it up? Do you have to have your honeymoon booked in order to set it up?

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We set ours up through libertytravel.com

I think that a honeymoon registry is such a great idea!!! I would be thrilled to give that as a gift to a couple. I think I remember a family friend doing this through Sandals a few years ago... I am not sure how it worked though, but I think I am definitely going to do this!

Thanks!

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Posted by springsandra

We did ours through a website called travelersjoy.com -- our friends had done it a year earlier and we thought it was a great option and a wonderful way to get our friends and family involved in our HM!

I'd be happy to send you the link to it if you want to see.

Basically, how it works is that you totally customize it yourself. You put in the photos, the titles for the 'items' or experiences, and the prices. Friends and family 'purchase' your items through the website with a credit card, and you get the money whenever you want. Either as a check from traveler's joy or wire transfer if you'd like. They do take a 7.5% (i think?) fee but that's less than tax, which is how I thought of it.

We had the most amazing honeymoon and did things like took a cooking class in Paris that I would never had done if my dad's cousin hadn't purchased it for us! It was also a great way to plan our HM activities since you needed to plan in advance to create the registry. However, since you're just getting a check for the lump sum in the end, you aren't forced to do everything, even if it was purchased.

Like a friend bought us 'french cheese' that was on our registry, but I didn't end up getting any... I think I got some extra chocolate instead.

HTH! Feel free to FM if you have any other questions about it!

We also registered at BB&B for some items, which was a good second option, especially for people who were getting us gifts after the wedding.

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I would love to see the link thanks! This sounds like it would work great. We are looking at going on a cruise for the honeymoon, so I'll check out what we can do through there.

Thanks so much ladies!!!

I have one thru Traveler's Joy.

Does anyone know the differences between the HM registries? Did anyone do their research on the fees?

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Posted by monamiestephanie

I have one thru Traveler's Joy.

Does anyone know the differences between the HM registries? Did anyone do their research on the fees?

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I did a bunch of research, balancing fees with ease for purchasers, etc. I checked out about 15 websites, but found that Traveler's Joy had not only the best reputation, but the fees weren't paid in an obvious way (as in, when friends were buying things, it didn't just tack on $5 or something per purchase to them and make them feel crappy about it) -- so while the site did take out a percentage (that's less than tax), it didn't matter at all. You can just adjust the prices up a little bit to cover their fee anyway. So if tickets to the Louvre are $8 each, you can price them at $10 or $12 each and cover the price and the fee. Since the money isn't earmarked to have to go to the specific item, it all evens out in the end.

We had a friend set theirs up through paypal and it was weird... we clicked on their link to purchase a horseback ride in Belize for them and it just sent us to plopping $90 into his paypal account.

Traveler's Joy just feels like a real registry, which I think is a nicer experience for guests.

mine's through HoneymoonWishes.com ... you have the option of having the fees paid by the gift-giver, or taken out of the money the give (so if they want to donate $100, you'll really get $90, for example ... and the other $10 will be the fees)

you don't have to have your honeymoon already picked out ... but after you do choose it, you should add more 'personal' things. For example, before we had our HM chosen, we had things like 'fruit basket in our room', 'night out on the town', etc ... after we booked it, we added things that were specific to our location (we're doing a cruise, so we added some excursions, etc)

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Posted by travelchica124

i actually did. i'm a geek that way. so here's what i found in case it helps you:

-DepositaGift and TravelersJoy have the same straight forward service fee of 7.5% (includes the credit card; nothing extra; no ties to travel agencies). The difference is that DepositaGift lets you choose who pays it (you or the guest) and TravelersJoy makes you pay for it.

-There are a bunch of other services with fees, but I found that either they charged higher fees or were way more confusing (ie. they said it was lower than the 2 above, but didn't tell you that there was an additional credit card fee [i think honeymoonwishes is that one] OR the fee was incremental depending on how much someone gave you and/or if you booked your travel through them. too many variables in my book)

-there are a couple that are either free (like a wish list format) OR that say they are free (honeyfund), but really you have to use paypal and there is a small fee with that. but what i really didn't like (besides the ugly looking registry) was that it wasn't a smooth experience b/c you have to jump out of the site to go to paypal which is a total pain. we wanted this to feel like a regular gift registry for our guests.

so, to sum it up (sorry this is getting long, but you asked!) we chose depositagift.com because:
-we had choice about the fee and it was totally straightforward for us and our guests
-they have the NICEST site out of all of them (you'll see for yourselves). the registry actually looks/works like a dept store registry, so we didn't feel like we were sending our guests to use some weird, hokey service
-it's not just a honeymoon registry. we are registering for our honeymoon and some remodeling on the new fixer-upper we just bought.
-they include a free wedding website (which you don't have to use, but we think it's a nice convenience)

hope that helps. again, sorry so long! have a great day :)

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WOW! You really did your research, travelchica! Thanks for all the great info, I'll definitely look into depositagift.