Choosing a Registry

Zola, an all encompassing beautifully designed, group friendly wedding registry.

When we got engaged, D and I had been together for 9 years, and had lived together nearly as long. We had just bought our own house nearly a year prior, and we had more than enough clutter taking up precious space in our small starter home. That's what life is all about, right? :-) 

Anyway, when I started thinking about registries, I dragged my feet. I knew we didn't need a lot from a traditional registry, and we knew we were going to be taking the epic honeymoon of our dreams-a trip for which we had been saving for years.
At first, I thought a Honeyfund was where we were going to end up. I even started creating one for us, and was OK with it, but it still felt like something was lacking. Further, I had a hard time nailing down particular "experiences" that people could fund, and felt bad about asking for $700 plane tickets from one person/family. Every time I tried to dive in, I found it more and more difficult to choose a registry-there were just way too many choices, with way too few things to register for that I could really see us using. 

So, I settled, and decided to start a Honeyfund and an Amazon registry. Fast forward to a couple weeks down the road, and I kept getting emails from Honeyfund. "Confirm your account", "Publish your account", whatever they kept sending me quickly got on my nerves. I'd go in to complete the process, only to find out Honeyfund was waiting for me to publish my registry. I had no idea what I wanted to register for, how could I publish my registry?! Further, I had become disenchanted with Amazon, with it's lack of personality and beauty-this is a wedding after all, every part of it should be beautiful!

Out of sheer frustration, I started looking for a new registry again. That's when I stumbled across Zola. Zola is a beautifully designed site, with ease of use clearly in mind. I loved it from the instant I laid eyes on it, and started designing (with ease!) my new registry. The best part? The visual aspect of it. It's just SO pretty. The best functionality of Zola? The ability to pull items onto your registry from literally any other website. The best unique thing about Zola? The ability to set up gifts as group gifts, asking your guests to "Contribute what you wish". I LOVED this aspect, as I couldn't shake the feeling of guilt and greediness when I was being forced to ask for a specific amount from my guests. Whatever they would like to gift us with (or not) was fine by me, and Zola captures that perfectly. 

For a honeymoon registry, and really any registry at ll, in my eyes, there is literally no competition between Honeyfund and Zola, and really any of the other registries that are out there begging you to pick them. Zola takes the (wedding) cake in so many ways. :-)

What are/were your experiences?

I'd love to hear what you think about both, did you use Honeyfund? Did you use Zola?

 Let other brides learn from your experiences.

That's what the Wedded Bliss Blog is all about. 

Until next time Blushing Brides!