We were really excited to see that Buy Our Honeymoon was listed by Mashable, an extremely popular social networking blog, as one of 30+ Online Tools for the Perfect Wedding — and we were the only honeymoon registry to be listed!
Although we have a good presence in the states, we are principally a UK company, so we were really flattered to be listed when there are so many honeymoon registries in the US (much more so than in the UK).
Our excited plans to blog this were diminished somewhat when we read one of the comments that followed:
“Poorly researched, picked obvious sites like The Knot and something as crass as buy-our-honeymoon.com (why not give-us-money.com?) There are way better sites for the honeymoon registry concept and there are a number of wedding-related sites that are not as commercial as The Knot yet offer great information.”
We have to admit we were a bit put out by that. At first we thought, well we can’t blog this now, it doesn’t make us look good. Well, actually we thought of giving him a good telling off first, but then we both realised we’re in our thirties and it’s not the done thing…
But then we got to thinking: crass? We aren’t crass. It evidently wasn’t the concept of a honeymoon registry that bothered him (some people have issue with gift lists at all, in any form) but the name.
Well, apart from the fact that he clearly wasn’t at all familiar with our service, otherwise he would have known we have lots of domains available for people to use, I think the problem here is really a cultural clash.
Americans can often be much more literal than the British (I am allowed to say that because my dad and brother are both Yanks). When we first created Buy Our Honeymoon, we called it that in a tongue-in-cheek, ironic way that we knew would amuse our guests. But then that’s what the English are famous for: taking the mick.
We created Buy Our Honeymoon because we hated the idea of asking friends and family to simply donate to a travel agent. Aside from the fact that we know many of them would not have done it, we felt we would have been robbing them of the opportunity to buy us a gift.
Although, having helped many other couples put their lists together over the past year, I think our own list could be improved, I put a huge amount of effort into making it. I wanted each gift to be special and important so that it would please whomever bought it and a little piece of our joy would be shared.
That principle guides every choice we make. That’s why we do everything we can to encourage people to make their lists fun and creative, so that their guests really enjoy buying them the gift.
According to the Cambridge English Dictionary, crass means: “without consideration for how other people might feel.” That couldn’t be further from who we are.
That’s why I think we are genuinely the best registry available — it is precisely because we are not crass that we work so well.
