Choosing the Gift List - From our real life bride Sandy

Many of our friends have asked about what we would like as a present on our big day. All we really want is for the friends and family that we love to be there to celebrate our special day with us, but people are quite adamant that they want to get us something.

I guess in the past Brides and Grooms wouldn't have been living together before they were married which is why they'd ask for crockery, kitchen appliances and general homewares. However, Adam and I have lived together for 2 years and our house is pretty much set up with everything we need, and in most cases double as we both lived alone previously. We still have a box full of plates, pots, pans, glasses and utensils that hasn't been unpacked since Adam moved in!!!

We began looking at alternatives to the Traditional Gift Registry and both really liked the idea of guests contributing towards our Honeymoon. We are off to Florida just after the wedding and are planning on visiting the Themes Parks and hoping to swim with Dolphins too. All of this adds on to the cost of our honeymoon. I had a look on the internet at some websites where you can set up your own website for guests to contribute to the honeymoon. Now the idea of this I LOVE. I love the idea of writing down a list of things we want to do and places we want to visit whilst on honeymoon and guests donating to us having a fun time. The only down side of this is the charges that these websites incur. A lot of them charge a fee to set up the website, some are free, but then a percentage of the guests' donation is withheld and some charge a set up fee AND keep percentage of any donations. I am just not comfortable with our guests thinking they're contributing to our honeymoon but somebody else keeping some of the money.

Our Travel Agent, said guests could contribute directly through them, but the honeymoon had to be paid for before our invites had even been written! D'oh!

With all of this taken into consideration we have asked that if guests do want to give a gift to congratulate us and wish us luck, they donate money for our honeymoon. Neither of us are completely comfortable asking for money as we don't want guests to feel they're being judged on how much they give (even though we never would judge and their attendance is far more important than any gift), so we are going to have a postbox for any cards and guests can drop money in if they wish.
We've not mentioned this in the invitations we sent out as really don't want guests to feel obliged, but with people asking, we have mentioned it on the website we set up to give guests details such as accommodation and directions.