Registry of complaints

The gist: Australia's department stores are backward technologically and I have had no end of trouble setting up an online registry. I feel like I'm living in the pre-information-age ages. Warning! This is a long post because I'm quite irritated and feel like I've spent all year trying to sort this out. I probably have.

The wedding is drawing nigh with less than 12 weeks to go before the big day. Plans are going fairly well although we're about a fortnight late sending out invites. It turned out to be quite difficult to get the envelopes we wanted due to the fact that textured paper isn't "in" this year. Who knew there was a fashion scene in the stationary world? Thankfully we did manage to track down some retro, last season envelopes and are now awaiting their delivery, which buys me some additional time to finalise our wedding registry.

The anticipated joys of a registry

Oh yes! The wedding registry. Back in January, when all the fun and excitement of planning a wedding started, the realisation that there would be presents dawned on me and I clapped my hands in glee at the thought of all the fun we, or rather I , would have picking out gifts for use in our married life. Finally, the opportunity to have some decent towels that don't leave fluff all over the bathroom floor, or really nice bed linen that doesn't go bobbly after a couple of months and has matching accessories like cushions and throws; or a matching set of pans in varying sizes with sturdy handles and lids that fit; and beautiful table cloths and place settings so we can cover up our disintegrating table and still put on a good-looking spread at dinner parties; and a matching toaster and kettle, where the toaster cooks the toast instead of burning it, and gets warmer and cooks more quickly the longer it's on, rather than the less obvious alternative which results in having to turn it up after the first couple of uses; and the piece de resistance, a beautiful fine-dining dinner set to stun and spoil anyone lucky enough to come round for dinner over the next 50 years. Back then it all seemed so exciting and full of promise.

Then came reality.

It's possible that I have made things more complicated than necessary. We do plan to have a wedding reception in the UK just as soon as we can gather the funds to get over there but nevertheless I thought an online registry would be easiest for everyone. I was disappointed to find that the major department stores in Australia, both Myer and David Jones, do not have online registries. I remember going to a wedding with a Myer registry and getting irritated because we had to actually go to the shop to view the list and then couldn't purchase a lot of the things on the list because our local Myer is small and the list had been created in Brisbane. Then we had to take the gift home, wrap it and take it to the wedding which meant the bride and groom then had to get it home from the wedding. Now I know some people like doing it this way and that's fine but it just seemed so backwards compared with the way I was used to doing things back in the UK. I didn't feel that would suit my guests, especially with many of them travelling from UK, Melbourne and Sydney.

No online registries for department stores

This was a few years ago so I thought maybe times have changed but no! Both Myer and David Jones cater for overseas guests by providing an email address. Email? This means, in the case of Myer, that the guest gets a list of the items on the registry emailed to them, then has to place their order by email, hoping that the chosen item, which they presumably haven't even seen a photo of, hasn't since been purchased. And as for payment... well having not gone through the process I can't say for sure how this works but one thing I will say is that due to my experience in IT there is no way I would expect a guest of mine to send payment information via email. It is hardly the most secure method of data transfer.

So that pretty much ruled out what would probably have been the easiest option for us. The next option was to look at online registries and I was pleasantly surprised to find a few of them out there. The downside with these are that we have to do all of our shopping online which is quite difficult when you're choosing things for your house and can't quite tell what colour they are, or feel the fabric. It also means that those guests who do like to go shopping and pick something out themselves can't really and it relies on everyone having internet access. Anyway, I looked at three or four of them, compared prices and ranges, gave Toby the gist and chose Home Couture. I then began what I assumed would be the fun task of adding items to our registry. I was immediately disappointed with the bedding (mostly white) and towel ranges which were limited and then I couldn't find battery-powered kitchen scales which take up much less space than the gorgeous retro-look ones Home Couture had in stock. I was also disappointed with the range of kettles and toasters. Eventually I ended up opening a registry with Wedding Gifts Direct as well to fill in some of the blanks.

Two registries on the go

Home Couture had much better prices so anything I couldn't find there I'd add to my Wedding Gifts Direct registry. I found the Home Couture website really frustrating to use, not least because at any one time approximately 40-50% of the items seem to be out of stock and it always seems to be the thing I want. The website itself was badly organised with one long drop down list of categories which is really difficult to read and incredibly haphazard. They really need some help cleaning up their data. My eyes hurt as I scan through the long list looking for something I want, there about three categories called Accessories, some categories are empty, others seem very random. All the items, no matter how many there are, are listed on one page which can become extremely long. There is a category called Cake Stands but there is also a cake stand in the category called Platters. There is a category called Knife Blocks but there are knife blocks in the category called Knives. I even found a salad bowl in the Computer Accessories department. "How on earth did we think this was the best website?" I found myself wondering.

Meanwhile, Wedding Gifts Direct wouldn't send us invite inserts until we'd finalised our registry and approved the terms and conditions which stated that once we'd finalised our registry we could only make changes in writing and were limited to three changes. All of the other registries I looked at allowed us to continue adding and removing items until the wedding day, provided the items haven't been purchased. Not only that but after charging each guest $10 for delivery (I seem to remember delivery being free in UK) they only deliver Mon-Fri and if you're not there to receive the delivery they charge you to redeliver. I told them I didn't accept either of these conditions so we got rid of that registry after I'd already spent a considerable amount of time adding things to it.

Back to one registry, and a less than satisfactory one at that

Home Couture didn't have the dining set I wanted (which I'd removed from the registry anyway after Toby pointed out that no one was going to spend that much money on us and we'd be lucky to get one plate) so I set about looking for other nice things and then I realised why I was surprised at how difficult I was finding this exercise. The online shop, which we'd browsed around whilst choosing our registry, is actually organised. There are three departments: Cooking, Dining and Living which are broken into subcategories, all nicely organised, sensible categories containing just the king of items you'd expect them too and multiple pages so you don't go blind trying to look at everything at once.

I sent a message via their "Chat Live with Customer Service" link which actually just sends them an email and asked if I couldn't just browse the online shop and add items to my registry from there.

No, they said, but why don't you browse the shop and make a note on paper of the items you'd like, then sign into your registry and list all the products by that vendor and find your items that way?

Hello? Make a list on paper? Kind of defeats the purpose of having an ONLINE registry, doesn't it? I tell you what.... instead of all that why don't YOU sort your website out and tidy up your data?

So here I am with the invites already a couple of weeks later than planned and still no satisfactory resolution to the registry issue. We've decided to ask our guests for money too so that we can buy all the things that aren't available or are "out of stock" on the Home Couture registry. I'm very tempted to spend Saturday in David Jones setting up a new registry. They don't have a local store which was why we didn't consider them in the beginning but I'm in Brisbane anyway this weekend. I'm also tempted to open a registry with one of the other online companies I found but I have spent so much time on this already and it hasn't been that fun, that I just don't think I can bring myself to do it. Besides, experience has shown me that just because the website is good it doesn't mean the bridal registry is.

Who would have thought that setting up a registry would end up being the most stressful part of planning a wedding? Bring back the days of 10 sets of pink sheets (if they're 1000 thread Egyptian cotton who cares what colour they are?), two toasters and ugly ovenproof dishes... so long as I get my Waterford crystal champagne glasses too.