The perfect wedding present: Your perfect honeymoon

by Ilona Peltz, Posted Jul 4th 2008 10:58AM

Filed Under: Honeymoons, Gifts and Registries, Culture Clash, Etiquette, Second Wedding

Here in North America, we have decided that it's tacky to ask for money at your wedding. This is a little ironic since by the standards of some other cultures, the whole North American Big White Wedding Industry is itself an exercise in the very tacky. All this proves is that "tacky" is relative. What would have horrified etiquette mavens of another time is perfectly acceptable today; what seems awful to us is fine to another culture. And you know what? No one's right, no one's wrong. It is what it is.

Enter the "Buy our Honeymoon" website. Now, even those among us who actually did ask her guests to contribute to her honeymoon (there's at least on one staff here) found this name a bit, well, tacky. But when we investigated a little further, we were pleasantly surprised.

The couple sets up a web page which introduces their guests to the idea. One of our favorites was this one. Isn't that perfectly gracious? Don't you just love them, sight unseen? When you go to their list, you see a choice of fun activities you can purchase for them: a trip to the zoo, surfing lessons, a massage at a spa, a meal at a fabulous restaurant... You can just see their dream honeymoon, can't you? And if you were friends of theirs, wouldn't you just love to help them get it?

We know some of you will still dismiss the idea as tacky. But some of you, those who've been living together for a while, or for whom this is a second marriage -- those of you who already have a pile of stuff and don't really need any more -- we're thinking this might have a particular appeal to you. And really, this is just another registry. We're certainly familiar with those! If you are interested, here's a link to the US version of the How To page.

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Tags: honeymoon-registry

Reader comments (Page 1 of 1)

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7-08-2008 @10:02AM

Andrew Green said...

Thanks so much for the review! We really appreciate and value your comments.

Our name came from the fact that we originally built the site for ourselves -- our friends and family knew that, coming from us, it was firmly tongue-in-cheek. By the time we released the site for others, we'd become quite attached to it!

But we know it's quite blunt! So, as you can see from the sample registry you've highlighted, couples can opt to use a different URL for their registry, such as http://www.the-gift-of-memories.com/ or http://www.our-honeymoon-registry.com/ -- so your guests won't ever have to see "Buy Our Honeymoon" if you don't want them to.

Once again, many thanks for taking a look at the site!

Cheers,
Andrew.
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1-26-2009 @12:27AM

jen said...

we used SendUsOff.com - http://www.sendusoff.com for our registry. we found that our guests loved this idea, and that we were able to take a nicer trip than we had planned because as our guests helped pay for it.