More couples opt for unconventional wedding gifts
FARGO — Allie Hegvick’s wedding registry had everything, including the kitchen sink.By: SHERRI RICHARDS , Forum Communications Co.
- Wedding registry
FARGO — Allie Hegvick’s wedding registry had everything, including the kitchen sink.
Hegvick, 24, and her fiancé, Eric Sauvageau, both of Leonard, N.D., also picked out a saddle pad, landscaping lights, nozzles for a water hose and an ATV sprayer for their wedding registry at Mills Fleet Farm in Fargo.
Hegvick says she didn’t know the Upper Midwest supply store had a gift registry until her mom, who works in pricing at Fargo’s Fleet Farm, told her.
“My fiancé and I, we live there half the time,” Hegvick jokes. “That’s where we always shop. That’s where we buy almost everything.”
So it made sense for the couple — who live in the country, have a horse and go camping — to register at Fleet Farm for their July 23 wedding. They also registered at Walmart.
“It’s just like going to Walmart, except you go to customer service,” Hegvick says about the process of registering for gifts at Fleet Farm. “I wish they would put out a kiosk. I think they’d get more (couples).”
Hegvick and Sauvageau’s choice of a registry store and items reflects a larger industry trend toward nontraditional bridal registries, said Amy Eisinger, associate editor at wedding planning site WeddingChannel.com. She describes nontraditional wedding registries as “anything your mom wouldn’t have registered for.”
These include registries for honeymoon activities or charity donations, online universal registries that list items from stores around the Web, and lifestyle registries that, like Hegvick and Sauvageau’s gift wish list, feature items that are “useful to you in an everyday way or have to do with your lifestyle,” Eisinger says.
Nearly nine out of 10 couples register for wedding gifts, and the most popular registries are still at Bed Bath & Beyond, Target and Macy’s, according to a 2009 wedding registry study by WeddingChannel and The Knot. But more couples now create nontraditional registries as well.
The 2009 registry study found that 12 percent set up registries for a honeymoon, up from 8 percent in 2008, Eisinger says.
Four percent registered for charity donations, and 3 percent used universal registries, such as MyRegistry.com or the WeddingChannel’s GiftRegistry360.com.
Eisinger says more grooms are getting involved with the registry process, which likely explains the increase in lifestyle registries. Also, the average age of the couples has increased, and more are cohabitating before the wedding, she says.
“They’ve already done all the blending of their items; they’ve already figured out the things they need,” she says. “They want to register for items they’re actually going to use and are a reflection of who they are.”
Ken Frey, director of operations for Mills Fleet Farm, says its stores have offered a gift registry for about 15 years.
“We have a very diverse line of goods,” said Frey, who works at the company’s Appleton, Wis., corporate office. In addition to small appliances, the store carries sporting goods and lawn-and-garden items, he says. “We can help to generate a list that would be pleasing to the bride as well as to the groom.”
And it’s not just Fleet Farm. Other unexpected stores where couples can create registries include Home Depot, Menards and sporting goods store Gander Mountain.
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