The couple was pretty chatty with the salesperson and indicated that they signed up knowing they didn’t want this stuff! Not duplicates/broken but they were pretty insistent they wanted cash back or store credit (can’t remember which). The woman standing behind me was also pretty taken aback. They were like “give us the money!”.
I suppose it’s possible they were pressured into registering…but seems to me as if that would have come from close family members (parents) who would notice they didn’t have the “stuff”. They also made no mention of that.
All of us regret that fondue pot or kitchen gadget we’ve never used, gift or not. It would be the very rare person who didn’t regret some of the junk they have sitting around
That seems crazy (especially since I think it was Macy’s that charged $15 per place setting for shipping fee**). Of course, if they ended up with an awkward number of items, such as many serving dishes and few place settings, it could make sense to return.
** We only did that once. Bought 3 place settings for a younger relative who had only a few other settings selected close in to wedding date. I’d rather give gift certificate (or check) than pay shipping fee and also fret over which address to use.
We have only used our fondue pot about once a decade but are really glad we have it when we do! Most recent was Valentine’s Day when we made cheese and chocolate fondue.
The black and white plates are our casual china from our registry. The long plate with the fruit and bread was a wedding gift which is seldom used but is just what is needed when we do use it. The champagne flutes are ones we bought for ourselves at the Crate & Barrel outlet in Old Town Chicago while buying a wedding present for someone else.
If a couple feels pressure to have a registry for older guests, I suggest registering at place like target, bed,bath & beyond, crate and barrel, pottery barn, etc so that there are lots of options for how to use store credit if returning. Don’t want China, stainless or glass ware - trade it all for a kitchen appliance or a nice lamp, etc
At my D’s online registry at Zola they were able to hold off getting items delivered until after the wedding and then they could re-allocate money within Zola from one item to another.
Also some of sites where you can set up registry will give you a discount on stuff you don’t receive as gifts. So if you just get cash you can buy remaining ing items at a discount. Pretty sure crate and barrel did that.
A friend of mine got married but I was living out of town and I was not invited. Still, when I was going to see her at Christmas I wasn’t to give her a gift for her wedding, so I went to the big department store and asked if she was registered. Oh yes, here she is, Bride and …NOT Groom. It was the registry from her first wedding about 5 years earlier.
Yum! That looks great! I have yet to meet someone who uses their fondue pot at all! I got one from my first wedding, but the forks all went missing…and I think i got rid of it before my second wedding…
Same with me. I try not to hold onto things that don’t get used. We’ve lived in houses that, even though they weren’t super big, always had a ton of storage, so it was easy to hold onto stuff and just forget about it. The house we live in now is bigger then any we’ve lived in, but it’s lacking in storage. So, it’s an incentive to get rid of stuff we don’t use and is just taking up space.
I’m sure if I went through everything we own, I’d probably find a lot more wedding gifts.
Years ago, we were invited to a dinner party. The couple were given an insane number of fondue pots as wedding gifts when they were married in the 70s. So they hosted an annual party with fondue appetizers, fondue main course, and fondue dessert. It was a lot of fun!
Right now I’m really regretting not taking my parents fondue set after cleaning out their house, it was avocado green and one of my favorite childhood dinners (living in the land of great Italian bakeries/bread).
