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Wedding gift spending

30 June 2010 – 5:36 pm

Earlier this week, our friends at men’s wedding magazine Staggered unearthed some research showing that wedding guests are, on average, spending less on wedding gifts now than they had in 2008. The research claimed that guests are spending £28.26 now, compared to £42.91 two years ago — a dramatic cut of 34%.

This prompted us to check our database. Were our couples being given more back when we started than they are now? Or does our wedding list service buck the national trend?

We decided to check only the value of gifts that we knew had been paid to couples through PayPal, excluding cash gifts altogether.  Although many of our customers choose not to collect their gifts online using a PayPal account, including these gifts would make it harder for us to know which gifts were paid and which were tests of the system that hadn’t been deleted from a couple’s Gift History. We felt, therefore, we’d get a more accurately representative sample by focussing only on those gifts we knew to have been paid online.

For gifts paid in British pounds, the average gift value bought on our site in 2008 was £43.13, which rose in 2009 to £45.27, and has risen again this year to £47.47.

Similarly, the average US dollar gift was $80.23 in 2008, which fell to $78.52 in 2009, but has leaped back to a brilliant $86.02 this year.

And since going live in 2007, we’ve had gifts paid in 11 different currencies. The stats show that 2009 was a bumper year for the Euro (with gifts averaging €97.77), and only gifts paid in Canadian dollars are of a lower average value this year than last.

So we’re very pleased to note that, contrary to the general trend elsewhere, guests using buy-our-honeymoon.com are even more generous now than two years ago — and they’ve always been more generous than the national average!

For help with making your honeymoon wishlist as fun for your guests as it is for you, check out our ten top tips on how to make the most of your wedding gift list.

By Andrew Green | Posted in Media | Tags: , , , , , , , | Comments (3)

Three minor updates

21 June 2010 – 11:50 am

In our efforts to be the UK’s best wedding list service, we’re always keeping an eye open for things we could do better, and making little improvements whenever we can.  This past week, we made three.

Our new system to automatically log PayPal gift payments is working brilliantly, and means that we can now be much more confident that if we don’t have transaction information recorded for a gift, it’s because payment didn’t go through. In turn, this means that the gift reminder emails you can send to guests could state this more clearly.

As before, our reminder emails politely repeat the original confirmation message sent when the guest first reserved the gift from your registry, but they also now state that the transaction has yet to be fully completed.  We’ve also tweaked some of the other wording in both the reminder and original notification emails, together with including our telephone number for queries if you’re based in the UK or EU.

On the subject of wording, we had an email from one of our customers pointing out that the search box on our homepage didn’t use gender-neutral vocabulary in asking for the surname of “either the bride or groom”.  We like to think we’re very careful about this, but sometimes it takes a fresh pair of eyes to spot something we’ve missed.

We’d also had in mind for a while that asking for a wedding date was also too limiting, since a lot of our customers have a destination wedding, with guests attending a big celebration later on.

So, we’ve adjusted the search form to try to address both of these issues. The form can be seen on our main homepage, and is also the focus of the homepages for each of our optional domains, such as our-wedding-list.co.uk. We hope the changes are subtle enough that many people wouldn’t notice!

Finally, we’ve made a small change to the form guests use to reserve gifts from your site. Shortly after we launched, we added in the option for guests to be able to modify the value of their gift. We had three situations in mind where this might be useful:

  1. You’ve asked for 2x Spa Treatments (one for you, one for your partner). A guest can now buy you both with a single gift.
  2. You’re asking for contributions towards a larger single cost, such as upgrading your air fare to First Class. You can now include the full cost of the item on your list and you guests can contribute whatever gift value they’re most comfortable with.
  3. You’ve asked for a pair of cinema tickets. A guest can now add in a little extra to their gift for popcorn and a coke.

The first of these was made redundant in March 2008, when we launched the option whereby you can ask for a specific number of gifts for any item. Then, in February 2009, we added a way of creating items that allow for a completely open contribution. That left only the third situation — and, as it turned out, very few guests ever actually did this.

So we’ve now removed the editable gift value box for most types of gift on the site.  Open contributions, of course, still request a gift value, as does the gift suggestion section at the foot of your registry page.

As always, we’ll keep looking for further improvements and clarifications we can make, and keep you posted right here.  Don’t forget, you can also find us on Facebook, or follow us on Twitter, for the very latest news!

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

Faster notifications

28 May 2010 – 9:42 pm

StopwatchWe’ve made a small change to the way we send out notification emails for gifts reserved on your honeymoon registry.

Since last September, we’ve delayed sending these emails for an hour, so that guests have an opportunity to cancel any gifts that had been reserved by mistake. This has proved to be a very useful system, but once a guest has made successful payment for a gift into your PayPal account, there’s no good reason to delay the notification emails to both you and your guests — so we now send them as soon as we get the transaction details from PayPal.

We also now include the PayPal transaction details in our email to you, so you have a record of these independently of the Gift History page in your Buy Our Honeymoon account.  Similarly, if a guest indicates that they intend to pay for a gift by cash or cheque, we’ll send notification to you right away, and indicate their intent in the message.

Of course, if you’ve chosen to keep your wedding gifts a surprise, we’ll only send an email to your guest, confirming the details of their gift.

If you have any queries regarding this, or your honeymoon gift list in general, please don’t hesitate to get in touch, or to leave a comment below.

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

PayPal gift transactions

21 May 2010 – 5:27 pm

At Buy Our Honeymoon, we don’t ever touch a penny of the gifts made to you by your friends and family, but your guests can nonetheless use a credit or debit card to make a simple online payment directly into your PayPal account, without needing to set up an account of their own.  This means that your gifts are yours from the moment they’re given, and you can securely manage your honeymoon fund however you please.

However, because payments are made into your account and not ours, we couldn’t always be certain whether a transaction had completed successfully.  The screen on PayPal that’s shown to guests includes a button to return them to your honeymoon gift list, but if a guest didn’t click it, we wouldn’t be able to determine the status of the transaction. Your guest’s payment would have gone through, but your Gift History in your Buy Our Honeymoon account would show “TBC”.

We’ve now been able to implement a system where PayPal informs us automatically, even though we’re a third-party to the transaction, whenever a successful payment has been made.

This means that we’ll be able to record the PayPal transaction ID for almost all gifts made in future through the site. Most guests do click the button to return to the site — but this new system should cover those that don’t, and make your Gift History a far more comprehensive record of payments that have been made into your account.

There’s a setting within your PayPal account that you can use, however, to disable these instant payment notifications, and if you’ve done this, we’ll still depend on your guests clicking the button to notify us manually. If you haven’t changed your profile to explicitly disable this, however, the new notification system will now already be at work for you. If you think you might have done, do please get in touch and we’ll go through with you how to check.

If you have any queries about this, or payments into your honeymoon account in general, please contact us and we’ll be glad to help.

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

Wedding list, cash, or honeymoon vouchers?

6 May 2010 – 11:52 am

Decisions, decisionsEarlier this week, Wedding Magazine published the results of its latest annual reader survey, revealing that nearly half of respondents would prefer cash wedding gifts. As the UK’s top honeymoon fund website, we’re not at all surprised by this!

But of course, the details behind the headline get even more interesting:

…forty-five per cent prefer their guests to give them money as opposed to 29 per cent wanting gifts from a wedding list and the same figure (27%) opting for vouchers for a honeymoon

We’re all three options simultaneously! Buy Our Honeymoon is a wedding list service where you get cash gifts to spend on your honeymoon.

We don’t provide vouchers as such (though our guest Gift Certificates arguably come close) — but we’re genuinely unsure how our customers would respond to this question. Do let us know in the comments, or on our Facebook page!

Building a honeymoon wedding list, detailing activities, experiences and upgrades to help make your holiday the trip of a lifetime, helps your guests to better engage with your wishes. Guests like to feel that their gifts are contributing something tangible to your happiness as a couple, and don’t want their affection for you to be measured only financially. Even the most sceptical guests can become spellbound by the romance of a personal, detailed honeymoon gift list, and feel reassured that they’re giving you a really special treat instead of merely contributing to an anonymous pot of cash.

When we built Buy Our Honeymoon five years ago for our own wedding, we found that our friends and family became part of our honeymoon in ways we could never have expected, bringing a part of their own personality and their unique relationship with us into the gifts they reserved.

For ideas on how to ask for honeymoon money in a romantic, polite, and creative way, take a look at our sample honeymoon gift lists — and don’t forget to check out our top tips on how to make the most of your honeymoon wishlist.

By Andrew Green | Posted in Honeymoon Gift List, Media, News | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments (1)

A quick note on the volcano

21 April 2010 – 10:10 am

Mercifully, it looks like flights are starting to resume in and out of Europe — but we know of many of our customers whose honeymoons are likely to have been seriously affected by the Eyjafjallajökull volcano.

We sincerely hope that the travel situation will start to return to normal, but the ongoing chaos may well mean that you have to make last-minute alterations to your plans even now.

If you have wedding insurance, it’s worth checking to see if you’re covered for any disruption. It seems that most insurance companies won’t cover for “Acts of God” — including the Icelandic volcano — but customers of Ecclesiastical are covered.

If you need to dramatically change your plans, do remember that the gifts made through your honeymoon gift list were bought purely because your friends and family want you to have a fantastic time. No-one will mind if their gift for one experience is used for something different.

Typically, our lists are closed one month after your wedding date — but we’re more than happy to extend this for as long as you need.  If you have to postpone your travel arrangements, do just let us know when you’d like your list to close instead and we’ll arrange that for you right away.

And if you’d like us to help you make adjustments to your honeymoon registry pages as a result of the current situation, we’ll be happy to help in any way we can, free of charge.  Do please contact us.

Photo by Sverrir Thor.

By Andrew Green | Posted in Honeymoon Gift List, Honeymoon Registry | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments (1)

Buy Our Honeymoon turns 3

2 April 2010 – 7:48 am

It’s our third birthday! Back in 2007, we launched a new honeymoon gift list service in the UK, with what was then a completely unique approach — instead of taking a commission out of gifts reserved through the site, we’d charge a simple, honest one-off fee, and provide a free trial with absolutely no obligation. We wanted to help couples make their wedding lists engaging, descriptive, beautiful and romantic. We wanted the site to be easy to use, for both couples and guests. And we wanted to keep refining and improving the site, expanding its audience while maintaining our focus.

We had lots of ideas, but no clue how successful it would become. Since then, we’ve served thousands of couples and tens of thousands of guests, who’ve reserved gifts worth hundreds of thousands of pounds, across dozens of currencies.

There have been registries for honeymoons spanning over a hundred countries across every continent — including Antarctica! — and several honeymoons circumnavigating the globe.  From knitting yarn to valet parking, doggy-boarding to an alpaca jumper, we’re always thrilled by the creativity, romance and wit shown by couples using the site.

One of the things that surprised us most, though, was how international the site would become. We’ve had customers from over 30 different countries, as well as the UK, USA and Canada, and we couldn’t be more grateful for their trust. It’s always so exciting to see new registries from couples in Australia, Singapore, Brazil, Hong Kong, Sweden or Dubai.

In this past year, we’ve improved the site so that you can now upload your own photos to customise your theme, download your Gift History, list your items in an ever-increasing range of currencies, with extra preferences, options and free additional services. We’ve added our most popular theme yet, and been Highly Commended in the UK’s national wedding awards.

We’ve got lots more planned for the year ahead — including some really big news coming very soon — but do please keep sending us your ideas and feedback. We really do want to provide you with the best service we possibly can.

Thanks to you all for another great year!

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

8 brilliant wedding blogs to follow

19 March 2010 – 6:25 pm

One of the joys of living deep in the world of weddings is being able to re-live the process of planning our own wedding, vicariously. Not only are we constantly blown away by how so many of our customers describe incredible, once-in-a-lifetime trips through their honeymoon registries, but we get to enjoy keeping up with the state of the industry through Twitter and a host of amazing wedding blogs.

So we thought it might be fun to talk about a few of the very best of these that we’ve found!

Real Honeymoons — @realhoneymoons, www.realhoneymoons.com

Each post on this stylish and growing blog is dedicated to a full description of a real couple’s honeymoon, providing first-hand accounts of the best places to stay, experiences and attractions to visit, and details of adventures for couples travelling worldwide. We totally share their belief that:

Whether you’re looking for two weeks of doing nothing on a Tahitian beach or hardcore hikes through the Amazonian jungle, your honeymoon should be the most fun, most romantic and most memorable trip you’ll ever take.

And they’re actively looking for couples like you to share your experiences. If you’d like your honeymoon to be featured, visit the realhoneymoons.com site and contact Allyson and Tim!

Rock n Roll Bride — @rocknrollbride, www.rocknrollbride.com

Sassy, prolific, and with an incredible eye for detail, Kat serves up a bright assortment of the best wedding photography, fashion and inspiration for couples looking to leave their individual mark on their wedding day. If vintage, quirky, punk or retro describe your wedding plans, you’ve come to the right place.

The Broke-Ass Bride — @brokeassbride, www.thebrokeassbride.com

Subtitled “Bad-Ass Inspiration on a Broke-Ass Budget”, and featuring the Fresh Hubby of LA, this blog delivers practical, savvy advice on achieving a wedding that neither breaks the bank nor compromises your spirit. It’s not about how much you spend, it’s how you spend it!

Staggered — @iamstaggered, www.iamstaggered.com

The UK’s leading online wedding magazine for men, Staggered knows that it’s not just brides who want to participate in planning the big day. Featuring advice and guidance on proposals, suits, stag dos, speeches and honeymoons, Staggered is witty, honest, and likely to gore us with those antlers.

The Bowie Bride — @bowiebride, www.bowiebride.com

I’ve resisted using the word “attitude” for anything else here because Britt, the Bowie Bride, has more attitude than Mr T in a plane full of bees. Charting her progress towards the aisle with truly refreshing, and sometimes brutal honesty, this blog is for couples unafraid to fly the freak flag.

So You’re EnGAYged — @soyoureengayged, www.soyoureengayged.com

We posted before about how thrilled we were to have been accepted onto So You’re EnGAYged‘s list of pro-gay wedding vendors, but in addition to their invaluable directory, the site is also an active blog featuring the voices of a range of different authors together with news on the progress of gay weddings across the US and the stories of real gay couples around the world.

London Bride — @london_bride, charleybeard.blogspot.com

Since we’re based in London ourselves, how could we resist this celebration of all things stylish for weddings in the capital? Glamour and sophistication are the order of the day here.

Offbeat Bride — @offbeatbride, www.offbeatbride.com

The mama of them all, Offbeat Bride believes that your wedding should be an expression of your identity as a couple, without judgment or competition. The site is authentic, encouraging and insightful. Recommended for all.

Who have we missed? Do you have any recommendations of other fab wedding blogs? Let us know in the comments, or send us a message on Twitter.

By Andrew Green | Posted in Blogroll, Media | Comments (8)

The Bride’s Book

24 February 2010 – 4:18 pm

We were delighted to learn that The Bride’s Book, an award-winning wedding magazine based in the Carolinas and serving the southwestern United States, had chosen to feature us in their new Spring 2010 issue.

Here’s what they wrote:

Consider a Honeymoon Registry

For the many couples who have already established a home together, a honeymoon registry is a fantastic way for guests to give you a meaningful wedding gift without doubling up on all the traditional housewares you already have.

You can break down your honeymoon into parts for your guests to reserve as gifts – activities and excursions, romantic meals, upgrades, or contributions to your airfare or accommodations – add anything you like! Visit www.buy-our-honeymoon.com for more information.

We’re really grateful to Courtney and the team at The Bride’s Book for this — the whole issue looks fabulous! You can find out more about The Bride’s Book on their blog, or on Twitter.

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

Refinements to big-ticket items

11 February 2010 – 1:36 pm

One of the great things about your Buy Our Honeymoon gift registry is the flexibility you have in how to divide up and present the items on your list. As well as single items, which become unavailable as soon as one of your guests has reserved them, you can have items that can be reserved an unlimited number of times, open contributions, and big-ticket items divided into a specific number of gifts.

So let’s say you’re taking a flight that costs £600 and you’d like to ask for contributions towards this.  You might decide to divide this item into 12 gifts of £50 each, so that your guests could then sponsor 500 miles (or more) of your journey.

Editing "The Road to Cairo"

We’re very happy to answer queries from your guests by email or phone, and we take careful note of the kinds of questions that come up to see if there are ways we can improve and refine a guest’s experience of using the site. This, together with some great feedback by one of our customers, prompted us to make a couple of small changes to how the way these kinds of gifts are presented on your registry pages.

Previously, the item would note how many gifts were still available — so, if 1000 miles had already been bought, it would say “10 available”.  Clicking to reserve that item would then also show a note that 10 gifts remained out of 12 originally available.

We’ve now refined this to make it more immediately clear when some gifts have already been reserved, and to try to explain a little better what a gift that’s divided in this way really means.

The Road to Cairo

At first, the item now states “12 of 12 gifts available”. Then, as soon as a gift of the item is reserved, this changes to “11 of 12 gifts remaining”.  And the note on the reservation form now states that “this item has been divided into 12 gifts of £50.00 from a total cost of £600.00.”

We hope that these two little tweaks will help to make it clearer to guests exactly what’s going on with these kinds of gifts, while still integrating them seamlessly into the rest of your list.

Of course, we’ll keep a close eye on guests’ reactions to the new format — and if you have any queries or comments yourselves, please don’t hesitate to let us know.

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