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The Wedding Ideas Awards 2012

16 January 2012 – 6:15 pm

For the third year running, Buy Our Honeymoon was in the shortlist for the Best Wedding Gift List in the annual Wedding Ideas Awards!

Each year, the brilliant Wedding Ideas magazine organises the UK’s most prestigious consumer awards, with couples voting in their thousands for their favourite wedding suppliers, venues and services. The finalists this year for the Best Weding Gift List were:

  • Buy Our Honeymoon
  • Cancer Research
  • Debenhams
  • John Lewis
  • Not On The High Street

We’re so thrilled to be in such illustrious, heavyweight company, and we’re very, very grateful to all our customers from 2011 that voted to put us there. You’re amazing and lovely, every last one of you!

This year, for the first time, the award winners in each category were chosen from the shortlist by a team of judges. And so, last Friday night, the award ceremony was held at The Brewery venue in the heart of London, where over 300 of the industry’s finest gathered for an awesome evening.

The 2012 winner in our category was Not On The High Street — a fab and hugely popular service for unusual and personal gifts sourced from a vast network of small, independent suppliers. Many congratulations!

One of the best things about this is how little we’re actually in competition with the other finalists — in business, that is, if not in the awards!  We mentioned this in 2010, when John Lewis won: we’re here to offer a romantic, practical alternative for couples who would actively prefer a different approach to their wedding gifts. To be rubbing shoulders with the biggest names in UK retail, both in stores and online, is a fantastic honour.

Thank-you to the team at Wedding Ideas — especially both Rachels and Martha — for the event, for their support, and for their ongoing dedication to providing an independent and individual voice on the newsstands. Commiserations and hugs to our industry colleagues who were also shorlisted in their respective categories, especially our friends at Shoot It Yourself, Cards By Sophie and Maisie Fantaisie. Howdy also to the lovely Mrs P and P, plus our tablemates at the National Wedding Show and the delightful Hellofoto Booths. And of course huge congratulations to all the winners, including the ever-fabulous Giddy Kipper and Lucy Ledger!

Lastly, thanks again to our amazing couples. We’re really honoured by your votes, your kind feedback and encouragement, and your trust in choosing us to be part of your big day. We promise again to do everything we can to deserve your support for next year!

By Andrew Green | Posted in Events, Honeymoon Gift List, News | Comments (4)

What will our guests think?

9 January 2012 – 3:34 pm

Towards the end of last year, we had an excellent question sent to us on Twitter from a bride who was very interested in setting up a honeymoon gift list with us, but who wanted to know how guests felt about the idea.

We set up Buy Our Honeymoon for our own wedding because we’d lived together for several years before taking the plunge, and didn’t need more stuff. We’d looked at traditional department store gift lists, but everything we thought about adding felt like we’d be listing it for the sake of listing something. What we really wanted was the trip of a lifetime, to start our lives together as a married couple.

We’ve found that guests love the romance of this. Your guests want their gift to be meaningful to you, and want you to have something by which you can remember them, something that acknowledges their love for you. If that’s an excursion swimming with dolphins, or a bottle of champagne on room service, that’s just as exciting — maybe more so — than glassware in your cupboard.

You don’t have to go into painstaking detail, but guests engage really well with lists that have a variety of items, and that allow your personality to show through. It becomes something much more real than just a bland request for cash.

If you’re concerned that some of your guests might be cautious about the idea of a honeymoon gift list, here are a few tips:

  • Remember that your guests never have to see the phrase “buy our honeymoon”.  You can choose from a whole range of discreet web addresses for your registry, including the-gift-of-memories.com, our-hearts-desire.co.uk, our-wedding-list.co.uk and our-honeymoon-registry.com.
  • You don’t have to limit your list to only honeymoon contributions. You can add any number of gifts for back in the real world too — see this sample registry for a few ideas.
  • Guests are always attracted to unique gifts and special treats more than donations towards the basics. Show tickets, spa treatments, excursions, meals, room and car upgrades are all always popular choices. And you can be creative with the way you divide up items and write your descriptions to emphasise the romance of flights and accommodation — consider allowing a guest to sponsor the first night of your hotel stay, or that last hour of your flight just before you land.
  • There’s only really one golden rule of etiquette: thank your guests. Send a personal, handwritten thank-you note or card after you’ve returned for your honeymoon. Perhaps you could include a photo of you enjoying your gift?

For more ideas on making the most of your honeymoon registry, see our ten top tips. And if you have any queries about setting up your list, please don’t hesitate to get in touch.

By Andrew Green | Posted in Honeymoon Gift List, Honeymoon Registry | Tags: , , , | Leave a Comment

Honeymoons and minimoons

9 December 2011 – 6:25 pm

We’ve spoken to lots of couples using our service who are planning a short, simple break after their wedding, in advance of their full honeymoon. Sometimes, this is so they can better schedule their honeymoon to suit the climate of wherever they’re going; sometimes it’s so they can keep their options open and book the honeymoon they can afford once their gift list closes.

So we got in touch with Kate from perfectminimoon.com to see if she’d like write a guest post for us on the rise of the minimoon! We’re really thrilled that she agreed! Over to you, Kate…

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Getting married is one of, if not the best time of your life and the icing on your perfectly crafted wedding cake is of course your perfect honeymoon.

These days however many newlyweds often find it impossible to have the trip of their dreams straight after their wedding. Maybe they don’t have the time, or any holiday left to take at work. Increasingly, people want to celebrate their nuptials with their children, their dog, and even their in-laws. Then there’s the factor of cost and the current financial climate; many couples simply don’t have the cash to spend on a honeymoon.

Of course, that’s often why couples choose to set up their wedding gift list with Buy Our Honeymoon — but if you’re getting married in June and you’re planning a honeymoon in the Maldives, you’re going to have to wait a while before the monsoon weather settles down and you can jet away!

And that’s where the minimoon comes in…

A minimoon is simply a glorious short trip, for example a long weekend, which is usually within driving distance or via short flight. Here you can spend a little time away with your beloved, without worrying about the passport you’ve left by the kitchen sink, the three-hour long check in queue at the airport, papier-mâché airplane food, or sitting next to the most annoying man in history on your 14-hour long-haul flight.

One of the great things about a minimoon, is that it can be exactly what you want – luxurious and decadent, small and cosy, dog- and child-friendly, set in a forest, city-based, or with a country pub at the end of the road… it is your chance to fall in love all over again, in your own time and at your own pace.

The UK is blessed with a wide selection of minimoon locations ranging from romantic boutique escapes to indulgent city centre chic. From the eminently affordable to the gloriously expensive, you’ll want your minimoon destination to be perfect for you.

To make the process of booking your minimoon as easy and as enjoyable as possible, take a look at perfectminimoon.com, which offers independent reviews of the very best UK minimoon locations. There you’ll also find rich colour photo galleries of the lovely venues we recommend, insider information on the best rooms to stay in, and you’ll even be able to email your loved one a link to the venue you’ve set your heart on… we’re here to help!

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Thanks, Kate! You can find out more about perfectminimoon.com on their blog, or you can follow @perfectminimoon on Twitter —and don’t forget to follow @BuyOurHoneymoon for all the latest news and developments here at the UK’s leading gift list service for honeymoons of any size!

By Andrew Green | Posted in Guest posts | Tags: , , | Leave a Comment

Please vote for Buy Our Honeymoon in the Wedding Ideas Awards 2012

4 November 2011 – 4:48 pm

Wedding Ideas Awards 2012The annual Wedding Ideas Awards are your chance to help celebrate everything that’s fabulous in the UK wedding industry. Voting is now open!

For the past two years, we’ve been super-honoured to have been finalists in the Best Wedding Gift List category, losing out both times to the mighty John Lewis.

This year as before, the finalists are determined solely from your votes — but now there’s a panel of judges to pick the actual winners from that shortlist. For the first time, small independent services such as ours have an equal chance against giant brands. It’s incredibly exciting!

Another welcome change is that there’s now a “no answer” option in each category, so you don’t have to vote where you don’t have an opinion.

Voting takes only a couple of minutes. You can find out more, and cast your votes at:

www.weddingideasmag.com

Voting closes on 30 November. We’d be very, very grateful for your support!

By Andrew Green | Posted in Events, Honeymoon Gift List, News | Tags: , , | Leave a Comment

Etiquette and happy gifts

10 October 2011 – 5:25 pm

Last week, we came across a story on the Etiquette Hell blog, of traditional wedding presents, passive-aggressive giving, and bad manners on Facebook. The story, and the comments that follow it, reminded us of some of the reasons we created Buy Our Honeymoon, and the differences between services like ours, traditional gift registries, and simple gifts of cash.

If you’re setting up home together for the first time, a traditional wedding registry of housewares is a great way to indicate your tastes and needs, particularly to family members who might not know you as well as your friends. But if you’ve lived together, or you’re combining two already well-stocked homes from years of independence, it might feel that you’re simply replacing or duplicating things you already have.  And so, without an alternative, many couples might find themselves pressured into registering for gifts they don’t really want. It’s only a short step from there to registering for gifts that you fully intend to simply return to the store.

Of course, this is no fun for anyone. Who wants to spend picking through a list of glassware or cutlery, when whatever you choose won’t ever be actually used or appreciated — or that might even simply be returned and exchanged for cash? And who wants to feel obliged to ask for things that would be wasteful of their guests’ generosity and kindness? How is this possibly a good thing?

But equally, the social taboo around merely asking for cash is there for a reason. Your wedding guests want you to be happy, they want for you to enjoy and appreciate their gift as a token of their affection for you — but a simple donation of cash measures their gift only by how much they’ve spent. There’s no room for personality, no choice, no romance. Just budget.

“We've been asked for a gift and the answer is simply: you, at our wedding, having a great time. But if you insist then we'll say what we'd also love is the most amazing honeymoon possible.”

It’s out of this dilemma that honeymoon registry services such as ours came about. By breaking down your honeymoon plans into specific kinds of contribution — your first night’s stay, a romantic meal, champagne on the beach, show tickets, 100 miles of your flights — your gifts become real. They’re actual presents, not just quantities of money.

Time and again, we’ve found that guests love this, that your family and friends can really engage with your honeymoon plans, and really feel that they’re giving you something special, something concrete, over and above the cost of their gift.

On a practical level, your guests are handing you the cash value of their gift, for you to spend accordingly. And this involves a level of trust — but it’s our experience that this just isn’t something guests worry about. Your guests love you, and don’t secretly believe you’re going to spend your wedding gifts on your rent. It’s important to be honest about your plans, but if you get to your honeymoon destination to find that you can’t go parasailing because of bad weather, the fact that you can spend your gift on something else romantic and fun is a relief for everyone!

All wedding gifts — whether they’re a set of spoons or a spa treatment in the Seychelles — need a personal thank-you, and that’s the only rule of etiquette anyone really cares about. Many couples using Buy Our Honeymoon provide a photo with their thank-you note, of them enjoying the actual gift they’ve been bought. It’s a great way to make the point!

Your Gift History on Buy Our Honeymoon helps tremendously with this — and you can even download it as an Excel spreadsheet! For more ideas on the perfect thank-you card, check out this excellent post on the Love My Dress blog.

By Andrew Green | Posted in Honeymoon Gift List, Honeymoon Registry | Tags: , , , | Leave a Comment

Come see us at the National Wedding Show

27 September 2011 – 5:11 pm

We’re really thrilled to be exhibiting again at this year’s National Wedding Show at Earls Court!  It’s been a couple of years since the last time we had a stand at the show — and ever since then, we’ve been looking forward to coming back!

National Wedding Show 2011The London show’s on this coming weekend — Friday 30 September to Sunday 2 October — and is the UK’s biggest and best wedding event, with thousands of ideas, exhibitors for every aspect of your wedding, seminars and catwalk shows. It’s an amazing opportunity for us to talk to couples face-to-face, to demonstrate the features and flexibility of our honeymoon wedding list service, and to get ideas and feedback for further improvements we can make.

We’ll be on stand H18 — come and see us!

By Andrew Green | Posted in Events, Honeymoon Gift List | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a Comment

Our new design is live!

13 September 2011 – 5:28 pm

We’re hugely excited to finally unveil our new design for buy-our-honeymoon.com! We’ve been working on this for quite a while, and we’re really pleased with how it’s turned out.

Take a look here!

It’s been more than 4 years since we first launched our honeymoon registry service — an eternity in internet time! Since then, not only has technology improved in various exciting ways, but we’ve refined and honed our brand design immeasurably. It’s lovely to be able to reflect those changes on the site itself.

We’ve made things wider, airier, and with much better typography. We’re less reliant on JavaScript for design flourishes. And although our bride-and-groom mascot hasn’t entirely vanished, they’re no longer on every page!

Our range of design themes for your registry pages hasn’t changed, of course.  We’ve got a few very subtle changes for them in the pipeline, but we’ve always been focussed on making your registry designs all about you as a couple, and not about us as a company.

We’ve tried to make sure the new design works well across a range of browsers — from the oldest Internet Explorers to the newest Firefoxes — but if you find any glitches, do please let us know.

By Andrew Green | Posted in Honeymoon Gift List, Honeymoon Registry, News | Tags: , , , , , | Comments (2)

When should you create your wedding gift list?

19 August 2011 – 4:46 pm

On Twitter yesterday, the brilliant @ConfessionOfB2B asked when the right time to start compiling your wedding gift list might be. This got us thinking: generally speaking, how far in advance of their wedding day do couples using our service create their list?

Of course, you can open your list as soon as you want to. We offer a no-obligation, 7-day free trial — at any point during or after this, you can make a single, one-time payment and spend your time leisurely adding items as you think of them during the run up to your wedding. Allowing your trial to expire simply means that your list can’t be viewed or edited until payment is made. If you wish, you can let your trial expire, and then at a later date closer to your wedding, log back in to make payment. Once you’ve paid, your honeymoon wedding list will be restored exactly as you left it. All of the work you’ve done will still be there; nothing will be lost.

You can also assign a release date to your list, so that your family and friends can view the first, introductory page of your site, while you continue to build your actual registry. That way, your guests can’t view your lists and start making gifts until you’re ready for them — and, of course, you can continue to make changes to your list right up until it closes. And we can keep your registry open for you after your wedding for as long as you want, at no extra charge.

So we’re super-flexible about this. You can sign up right now for any wedding date in the next five years, though we do ask that you do so at least two weeks in advance. But what’s the average?

Turns out, it’s 154 days, roughly five months. Generally, couples set up their list at about the same time they’re sorting out their invitations and arranging their honeymoon travel and accommodation.

Pie chart

Almost twice as many couples leave less time than this between setting up their list and their actual wedding date, compared to those who leave more. The longest gap left by one of our customers was just over 4 years, the shortest 14 days.  The majority set up their list between three and six months before their wedding.

What’s right for the majority, though, might not be right for you. If you’re thinking about your gift list, there’s no reason not to go ahead and start your free trial right now. And if you have any queries about the honeymoon wedding list service we offer, please don’t hesitate to get in touch.

By Andrew Green | Posted in Honeymoon Gift List, Honeymoon Registry | Leave a Comment

Making the site faster

13 July 2011 – 5:10 pm

CheetahIf there’s one thing we don’t like to do here at Buy Our Honeymoon, it’s sit still. We’re always making small changes and improvements to the site, even if it’s just to the systems we use internally to help us with customer or guest enquiries. Sometimes, we add a larger feature you can use when putting together your wedding list or customising your registry pages, other times it’s a minor tweak that doesn’t demand a blog post to announce it.

This week, it’s a bit of both. We’ve made some adjustments to the site that should make viewing your list or managing your items much quicker. If you’ve got many items, you should hopefully notice a big improvement.  Similarly, the List Details tab when you log in to make changes to your registry previously might have loaded slowly if you have a lot of categories. We’ve now identified what was causing this, and the page now loads super-quickly even with dozens of categories.

The faster the site runs, the easier it is to use. We’re always on the lookout for further improvements we can make — for updates on our progress, don’t forget to follow us on Twitter, or join us on Facebook!

By Andrew Green | Posted in Honeymoon Gift List, Honeymoon Registry | Tags: , , , , , , , , | Leave a Comment
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