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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

The Wedding Ideas Awards 2010

26 January 2010 – 1:50 pm

As our fans on Facebook will already know, we were overjoyed to learn that Buy Our Honeymoon was one of only three finalists for Best Gift List in the Wedding Ideas Awards 2010.

The Wedding Ideas Awards are determined solely from the votes of real couples across the UK, so we simply can’t thank all our wonderful customers enough for your amazing support in getting us nominated alongside John Lewis and Debenhams — household names here in the UK, and the two largest department store chains in the country.

We’re not normally in competition with the high street — if you’re setting up home together for the first time as a married couple, the traditional department store registry of kitchenware and linens is a natural and appropriate choice. Instead, we believe we offer a romantic, meaningful alternative for couples who already have all the household items they may need, and who would actively prefer a different kind of wedding gift.

So it was truly incredible to find ourselves pitted against two 800lb gorillas of the industry. That’s 1600lbs of gorilla!

As the nation’s most popular gift list service, it was only right that the award itself went to John Lewis, leaving us and Debenhams both Highly Commended. It’s a cliché, of course, but it’s true: it really was an honour to be nominated.

We’re still a very new business, and to be recognised like this at such a prestigious event in the wedding calendar is simply awesome. Just like Wedding Ideas Magazine itself, we’re small, independent and completely dedicated to providing the best service we possibly can.

To have been voted ahead of so many other popular and well-known companies — both traditional and alternative — is phenomenal. We’re very, very grateful to our fabulous customers and supporters for all your votes and kind words — and we’ll do everything we can to make sure we deserve your support next year, too.

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

10 more fantastic theme customisations

12 January 2010 – 12:08 pm

Back in July, we showcased some of the most exciting ways you’d all customised your wedding list pages using our design themes.  We’re so proud to have such creative and talented customers, we thought it might be fun to take a look at another ten of the very best.

Our new Vintage theme has been incredibly popular already, and seems to lend itself very well to being adapted with your own photos, as Tahnee and Matt’s honeymoon registry shows:

We love the gorgeous “just married” car, and having the photo in black-and-white works brilliantly with the subdued colour scheme of the design.

Speaking of cars, Iain and Jo have adapted Parchment and Lace with a stunning vintage car for their honeymoon in Cuba:

The sepia treatment of the image complements the tones of the theme, and very successfully turns a design intended for European antiquity into a design that works perfectly for the colonial elegance of Havana.

Hannah and Nigel took a very different approach for their own Cuban honeymoon adventure!

Same destination, same classic car, completely different result. Here, the vivid colours of the illustration combine with our Road Trip theme to evoke the latin passion and spice of the region!

Many couples use our customisable themes to include a photo of themselves in their design, which is a great idea and really helps to make your wedding list all your own.  We thought Michelle and Ewan’s photo was just outstanding!

The energy of the photo works so well with the quirkiness of the Flowerpower design, and adds real personality to their wedding registry.

Similarly, in one of the very first customisations made of our new Vintage theme, Chris and Sarah chose the perfect photo to upload!

This theme introduces a slight vignette effect to the photos you upload, which adds just a little extra romance to what’s already a wonderfully romantic shot of the happy couple.

Now, if you were planning a honeymoon to the Canadian rockies, you’d use our Misty Peaks theme, right? Well, Lucy and Graham had the fantastic idea of customising our Paradise theme with this fabulous image, exchanging palm trees and golden sands for crisp mountaintops and glacial lakes.

We’ve always thought that uploading fresh images into a theme could allow a design originally built for one kind of honeymoon to work just as well for another — but we didn’t expect that our tropical beach design could be so successfully transformed!

Of course, that’s not to say that Misty Peaks can’t be adapted beautifully.

Sarah and Ed have chosen a breathtaking photo to customise their wedding list for a honeymoon to Rejkavik, Iceland, with the sumptous green of the valley floor contrasting wonderfully with the dusky mauves of the theme background.

In the last of our picks using the Vintage theme, Stephanie and Evan have chosen to highlight the romantic White Gate Inn, where they’ll be staying for their honeymoon in North Carolina.

Their design emphasises the history and charm of Asheville, and is a great way of bringing to life an offbeat honeymoon destination. The more your guests can engage with your honeymoon plans, the more they’ll enjoy using your registry.

Our Scrapbook theme has always been one of our most popular and versatile designs, and we were really pleased to see it being used so well for a honeymoon in Maui!

Nige and Nic have chosen a lovely, slightly retro, watercolour image that looks like it’s always belonged with the leafy background of this theme, and is another great example of taking a design we put together with one kind of honeymoon in mind, and adapting it perfectly for a completely different destination.

Finally, Andrew and Sarah chose Parchment and Lace for their multi-centre trip to New York and Barcelona, and found an image that worked brilliantly for both, pulling together the deep history of Broadway, and the Gothic charm of Catalonia.

Even the subtlest of changes can really personalise and enliven the design you choose for your honeymoon gift list.

That’s ten of the best designs we’ve seen, out of the hundreds you’ve created in these past few months alone.  It’s been hard to pick only ten — we love seeing the creativity and personality that shines through from every wishlist on the site!

If you have any queries about customising our themes, or using any of the other great features of our honeymoon gift list service, please don’t hesitate to get in touch.  We’ll be very happy to help in any way we can.

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

New theme – Vintage

3 December 2009 – 6:35 pm

We’ve now released a brand-new design theme for Buy Our Honeymoon — Vintage. Evoking the sophisticated 1940s or the glamorous 1950s, it features a beautiful floral patterned background, a muted colour palette, and stylish inset photography.

It’s the first theme we’ve designed from scratch since we upgraded all our themes earlier this year to enable you to upload your own photos into the design and to use special fonts for your registry title and category names. Naturally, Vintage can also be fully customised, and (if you’ll forgive me) features the best uppercase-H of any font I’ve ever seen!

Vintage is suitable for any honeymoon destination (though we think it’ll work particularly well for adventures in Latin America or romance in Western Europe) and it’s available right now for all our customers.  Just log in and click the purple Theme tab, or click here to start your free trial.

Registry cards to coordinate with the new design will be available from Monday for our customers in the UK and EU.

We’ll also have a new sample list using Vintage available as soon as possible — but for now, here’s James and Mel’s Honeymoon Paradiso in the new theme.

We’re always on the lookout for new ideas for design themes we could offer, so if you feel there’s a gap in our repertoire, please don’t hesitate to let us know.

And, to stay right up-to-date with all the latest developments, why not become a fan on Facebook, or follow us on Twitter.

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

So You’re EnGAYged

24 November 2009 – 5:27 pm

We’re completely thrilled to have been approved as a pro-gay wedding vendor on So You’re EnGAYged, an excellent wedding resource for same-sex and allied couples.

So You're EnGAYged

So You’re EnGAYged lists vendors based on their answers to a questionnaire regarding their relationship with the LGBT community and their support of LGBT rights. Although we don’t specifically ask couples signing up to use the site whether they’re same-sex, around 1.5% of couples signing up provide a title (Mr/Ms etc) for both partners that suggests a same-sex marriage. We believe our site uses gender-neutral vocabulary throughout and, just as a small courtesy, if you indicate through your choice of titles that you’re a same-sex couple, we remove our bride-and-groom cartoon from the masthead of your management screens and of course your registry itself.

As well as a vendor directory, soyoureengayged.com is also an active blog featuring gay weddings and engagements, together with news, ideas, polls and competitions.  You can also follow @soyoureengayed on Twitter. We’re very grateful to have been listed, and look forward to the continued success and growth of the site!

If you have any queries about our honeymoon registry service, please don’t hesitate to get in touch.

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

5 fab services found on Twitter

13 November 2009 – 4:18 pm

twitterWe’ve been enjoying the Twitter machine for a few months now — it’s great to be able to connect with customers and to keep everyone up-to-date with announcements and developments to the site.  If you don’t already, you should follow us on Twitter here.

It’s also fascinating to chat with other wedding vendors, and to discover new companies offering wedding and travel services that we might not have heard of otherwise.  So, since it’s a Follow Friday, we thought we should do our bit to help raise the profile of some of the most unusual of these.

BrideTide — @bridetide, www.bridetide.com

Prolific and consistentlty interesting on Twitter itself, BrideTide is a dedicated wedding news portal in the mould of Digg or Reddit, collecting together the best wedding blog posts, tips, trends and advice from around the web. Free to join, BrideTide users can vote and comment on all stories and contribute their own links and discussion topics.

Wedcycle — @wedcycle, www.wedcycle.com

A brand new site currently offering free membership, Wedcycle lets you pass on items from your wedding such as tealights, table centrepieces, flowerpots and so on.  Rather than letting these gather dust in the attic, you could list them on Wedcycle for other couples to collect and use in their own weddings!

ooh.com — @oohdotcom, www.ooh.com

A great way to research and book activities for your honeymoon, ooh.com lists fresh events, tours, and experiences. Activities are added to the site by independent individuals and companies, who offer a huge variety of things you’d normally never hear about, in locations all over the world.

Wish Lanterns — @wishlantern, www.weddingwishlanterns.co.uk

Beautiful and safe, wedding sky lanterns are a more peaceful alternative to fireworks, traditionally used in Asia and available from Wish Lantern in the UK and USA. The lanterns symbolise the release of your worries and problems, and people have the option of writing a wish on a little tag and attaching it to the lantern for the bride and groom to send up into the skies.

Creative Custom Card Boxes — @cardboxdiva, www.creativecustomcardboxes.com

With many of our customers opting to receive the value of their honeymoon gifts in a card on the day of their wedding, how could we resist Marni Gold’s handmade, bespoke card boxes? Each box is unique, completely personalized to match your wedding, and a great way to keep your wedding cards safe long after your big day.  Shipping is free within the USA, and available worldwide.

And of course, that’s just scratching the surface, without even mentioning great wedding blogs like @rocknrollbride, handmade stationery artists such as @weddingpara, or brilliant wedding photographers like @bigbouquet.

Do you have any recommendations of other fab wedding and travel services to follow? Let us know in the comments, or of course, by sending us a message @buyourhoneymoon.

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