Couples register for honeymoons and 'life experiences' rather than the traditional china and crystal(2)
The Wilsons received most of their Honeyfund contributions from their younger friends, while the older guests tended to purchase crystal and china.
Courtesy of Josephine Wilson
Josephine and Robert Wilson's Honeyfund registry even included the gas to get to the Poconos for their honeymoon.
Josephine Wilson praised the simplicity and organization of the Honeyfund. Wilson placed the link to their Honeyfund registry on the couple's wedding website to give guests easy access. She felt relieved not to have to deal with envelopes of cash; when the couple was ready to take off on their honeymoon, they just withdrew the money from a Paypal account.
"Couples are using online a lot more while planning a wedding," Eisinger said. "Now you can have a universal registry, and I'm even hesitant to say if honeymoon registries existed 10 years ago. Only in the past five years has this stuff really surfaced."
Michael Gleeson and Andreea Vasilescu, who married on July 17, were reluctant at first to try the Honeyfund, but when their friends registered for it, they thought it was a "neat alternative."
Once the duo decided what they wanted to do -- take a honeymoon trip to Greece -- Gleeson wrote up the descriptions of what they hoped for and posted them on Honeyfund.
"Greece isn't necessarily cheap," said Gleeson, 37, who lives in West New York. "We weren't sure if people would go for it."
"But we had to add more things because they all were purchased so quickly by our guests," said Vasilescu, 30.
The couple didn't feel comfortable asking for hotel or airfare from their guests, so they asked for dinners at local restaurants, a Santorini sailing trip and a snorkeling trip in Mykonos, among other things. The newlyweds did not ask for anything they couldn't have purchased on their own, they said, but the gifts helped ease the cost of the trip.
"We are not the most traditional couple -- we have a groomsmaid," said Vasilescu. "For us to have to have something different, like a honeymoon registry, it's not a surprise to either of our parents. We tend to make things up as we go and what works for us."
