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Thank
You for My Honeymoon
Some
couples prefer a week overseas to service for 20
By
Miriam Axel-Lute
Wedding gifts used to serve a very specific purpose: getting
young adults set up in their first household. But these days,
as the average age of getting married drifts later and later,
the choice facing many couples is which of their individual
sets of dishes to give away, not what china pattern to put
on their registry.
One thing few of us about to combine households have lying
around, however, is a spare savings account marked “honeymoon.”
The solution? Create a honeymoon registry. A honeymoon registry
is very similar to a traditional gift registry, except that
well-wishers see options to buy items such as one night’s
stay at a B&B, a massage at the hotel spa, a whale-watching
cruise, or dinner at a specific restaurant. They can also
contribute toward plane fare or give cash earmarked for a
night on the town. Although it basically works out to gifts
of cash, a honeymoon registry employs a tactic well known
to charities: People feel much better giving cash when it
is earmarked for something specific.
For a couple, a honeymoon registry has a few distinct advantages
and disadvantages. On the upside, it makes you plan your honeymoon
in advance. I, for one, had no idea that nearly all the B&Bs
in Vancouver would be booked through the fall by the previous
February. If I hadn’t been gathering information then so I
could put specifics onto our honeymoon registry, we might
have found ourselves staying in a tacky motel instead of snagging
the last open suite in a B&B a few blocks from one of
the city’s coolest neighborhoods.
On the other hand, with a regular registry, if you don’t get
that expensive crystal it’s no skin off your bank account.
But much of your honeymoon needs to be committed to in advance,
especially plane fare, lodging, and any in-demand special
events. The safest way to go about it is to save enough, or
nearly enough, for a very bare-bones trip, and then let the
generosity of your guests layer on all the fun details. If
you need to rely on your guests to make it happen at all,
you may need to set a gift deadline well in advance of the
wedding (and send reminders) to know whether it’s a go, or—safer
for those with last-minute friends—schedule the honeymoon
for a few months after the wedding.
Of course it can end up working out better than expected:
Suzanne and Pete, a Capital Region couple, were able to extend
their honeymoon an extra five days once they saw how many
gifts they’d gotten.
There’s a wide range of options for how to go about creating
the registry itself. Dozens of Web sites are devoted specifically
to honeymoon registries: Some are through travel agents or
hotel chains, others are independent. They accept credit cards,
keep track of the balance, and send you one big check and
a list of addresses for thank-you notes.
These registries are convenient for you and your gift givers,
but be sure you read the fine print. Many charge a service
fee of 7 to 10 percent on the gifts received. Others require
that you book your travel through them, often at inflated
prices. A CNN reporter found one site that charged twice as
much for a beach barhopping tour through the registry as it
cost to sign up for the tour directly. On some services, the
gifts expire after a certain amount of time. On others, especially
the hotel- sponsored ones, your guests can buy you only the
services offered through the site, so you can’t tack on local
restaurants or open-ended items or create a multiple-location
trip.
If the official registries don’t work for you, you can also
create a DIY honeymoon registry using one of the (truly) free
registry Web sites. This is what we did. To do this, find
a trusted friend or family member to be your banker and direct
gift givers to mail checks to that person or make transfers
to her Paypal account. She can give you the one big check
and a list of who sent what. Or you can skip this step and
just collect the checks yourself, since, as we found, even
if you do assign a banker, some large portion of your guests
will just stick their checks inside their cards and bring
them to the ceremony anyway.
Once you’ve got your method, it’s time for the good part:
Plan your honeymoon! Don’t forget to include the basics: travel
(including airport parking, cabs, public-transit passes, and
car rentals) and lodging (including estimated taxes and tips).
You can break down large expenses like plane fare into 10
or 20 smaller gifts. (A great way to have a greener honeymoon
is to throw in the option for someone to buy you carbon offsets
for your flights. Bonus points if you can guess ahead of time
who among your guests will actually buy them.)
Now add in the fun stuff. Show tickets, museum admissions,
tours, spa treatments, and kayak rentals are all fair game
(but make sure you can fit it all in or extend your stay if
everyone comes through). Throw out a couple specific restaurants
that look interesting, but also leave some of your meals open
ended (“$50 for dinner after the show” or “Send us to dinner
at your favorite restaurant in London”). Include links
in your descriptions when you can and explain why things interest
you: The more your guests feel like they’re taking a vicarious
trip through reading about your plans, the more they will
feel like they’ve actually participated in choosing a meaningful
gift for you.
Finally, once you’re on the trip of your dreams, keep your
camera at the ready and be sure to snap a picture of each
item someone paid for so you can throw an appropriate picture
or two in each thank-you card.
2008
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