Online wedding registry or the department store list

Your parents made their wedding list at the department store in town, with a clipboard and a scanner. Your friends made theirs on their phone, with links from six different shops. Both still exist, and the choice decides how your guests shop and how much say you have over the list.

Online wins on convenience

An online registry is built on the sofa on a Tuesday evening. You paste a link from any shop, the name, photo and price come with it, and you change your mind as often as you like. Guests buy at eleven at night from another country, which matters as soon as part of the family lives abroad or the wedding is somewhere with a flight involved.

The store list needs a visit to add something, and often a phone call to find out what has been bought. What you get in return is the afternoon itself: you hold the glasses, you weigh the pan, and the person behind the desk has sold three hundred of them and can tell you which handle comes loose.

More choice online, tighter control in the store

A store list is limited to that store's shelves. Department stores carry a lot, but the Le Creuset colour you want, the tent for the honeymoon and the two nights in a cabin are never on the same floor. Online, they sit on one list, and a contribution towards the cabin is an item like any other.

The store's advantage is that everything comes from one warehouse. One delivery, one returns desk, one place to go when a plate arrives broken. With an online list drawing from six shops, six shops have your address.

Guests do not all shop the same way

Younger guests would rather compare prices on their phone and order in two minutes. An aunt of seventy-eight may prefer to walk into a shop, ask for the list under your name and let someone wrap it. A list that only exists online leaves her ringing your mother.

The store gives that aunt a Saturday afternoon and a nicely wrapped box. The trade-off is opening hours and distance, and the guest who lives 200 kilometres away ends up ordering online anyway.

Tracking who bought what

An online list stays current on its own. A guest reserves the mixer, the next guest sees it is taken, and nobody brings a second one. By default you see none of that, which keeps the surprise; if you would rather know, you switch on "show reserved gifts" yourself and see who reserved what.

Store lists lag. The list on the counter is updated when the shop gets round to it, and the couple usually finds out what was bought when the boxes are delivered. Some stores assign a consultant who will go through the list with you by phone, which is pleasant and slow.

Perks differ, and the store has more of them

This is where the department store still wins. Many offer a completion discount of 10 to 20 percent on whatever is left on the list after the wedding, longer return windows and free gift wrapping. If your list is mostly kitchen and table, that discount on the remaining pans is real money.

Online, the perks are of a different kind: a group of colleagues contributing to one expensive item, or a plain cash contribution for guests who prefer that, without an envelope changing hands at the party. Happy Giftlist is free either way; there is no cut on contributions.

Running both at once

Many couples now run the main list online and keep a short list at one local store for the guests who want to walk in. It works, on one condition: the two lists must not overlap. Put the table and kitchen things in the store, keep the rest online, and say on the invitation which is where.

Two lists with the same twelve wine glasses on them end with twenty-four wine glasses. Nobody has ever needed twenty-four wine glasses.

Start online, because that is the list most of your guests will use, and add the store list later if the family asks for it. You can create a wedding registry with links from any shop and share it as soon as the invitations go out.