When you’re caught up in the flush of romance and celebration, it’s easy to forget that online bridal registries and wedding gift companies can sometimes be as shonky as snakeoil salesmen…

The UK-based online wedding gift company Wrapit, investigated by The Insolvency Service has been found to have been very naughty indeed.

For over seven years the company’s directors made false credit card refunds and managed to rake in over £872,000 from new customers even though it had pretty much been in the red from day one.

By the time it collapsed in August 2008 with debts of over £7 million, it had over 70,000 undelivered wedding gifts and lots of very angry, unhappy bridezillas (sorry, customers).

The Managing Director and Retail Director were disqualified for a total of 15 years, but this would have come too late for the thousands of weddings their unscrupulous activities would have affected.

It’s hard to know what would be worse – a hailstorm on your wedding day, or having your wedding gifts disappear into the great e-never-never.

If a department store wedding registry doesn’t appeal to you, there are many online gift registries you can use.

Broadly, they break into three types of categories:

* cash only (this is the type of registry when you want no gifts but cash because you want to splurge on your honeymoon, pay off your wedding, obtain a deposit for your first home or even pay for renovations)
* cash + gifts (this lets guests choose which they’d rather give you and often straddles experiences such a hot air ballooning)
* gifts only - which are the more traditional type of wedding gift registry your mother used, requesting things like homewares, appliances and furnishings.

I’ve compiled the features and potential costs of 7 Australian online wedding registries – it’s worth doing your homework before you sign up as your gift registry could be worth thousands of dollars worth of gifts and/or cash!

One of the many tasks involved with organising your wedding is setting up the gift registry.

In the Olden Days, you’d just troop off to your local department store where you’d set off to create a new world record in knowledge about dinner sets, thread counts and silverware patterns as you selected your bounty for your future home.

Now of course you can set it up online and save yourself many, many hours traipsing about with a price-checker (sorry, your husband-to-be).

What are some of the things to look for?

1. Prices
Do they charge the bride and groom for setting up a registry? Or the guests? Or both? Is it a percentage per gift, or a flat fee no matter how much people spend?

2. Showroom
Do they have a showroom displaying their goodies in case you need expert advice? Their consultants can let you know if a favourite (old) pattern is about to be discontinued and many cases can get you special deals if you order a sufficient quantity, and in some cases, a lifetime discount for purchasing homewares and appliances through them. If you live outside the capital cities, your next best chance to see products is at a regional bridal fair.

3. Gift-wrapping
Do they offer it? They won’t as there’s no need to if it’s a cash registry. If they’re actual gifts, your guest may get charged a wrapping fee. But you might be surprised at the loss of ceremony and “occasion” in being unable to “unwrap” your gifts.

4. Real or “fake” gifts
Are you selecting, for example 12 x Royal Doulton white china dinner plates that guests can buy per plate for your enjoyment? Or are you providing a picture as an example, but really intending to pocket the cash? Keep in mind that those guests will ask you seemingly ad nauseum about the gifts they thought they bought you – and may even want to see them.

5. Registry expiration
Does your registry close the day of your wedding? A month later? When you’ve reached a cash target? 90 days later? The later it closes, the longer you may have to wait to receive your gifts.

6. Referral program
Do they reward you for referring them to your friends? Wedding registries are worth big bucks.

7.  Delivery
Is there a charge for getting actual gifts delivered? Do they deliver all in one go or can you start receiving them slowly as the items get purchased. Can they hold them while you’re on honeymoon or moving into your new house?

8. Testimonials
Have your friends and family used them? Do they provide names and suburbs of those who have used them? You might want to Google them first to see what comes up if you haven’t heard of them before – don’t forget, they will potentially receive thousands of dollars of your guests’ money and you need to be sure they’re above-board.

Saturn, the planet of maturity and responsibility, entered Libra on 21 July 2010 where he will stay until October 2012.

Libra rules marriage, relationships, fairness, justice and good manners. Over the next two years we will see a huge emphasis on – and return to – courtesy and politeness. Libran Oscar Wilde said, “Manners before morals” suggesting that people will forgive many things if you have good manners!

And this includes the need to acknowledge someone’s gift with a thank you card (or in descending order of charm and effort, a thank you call, email or text).

When someone has gone to the effort of selecting, paying and presenting you with a gift, the very least you can do is acknowledge it. Not being thanked can make you feel used, ripped off and resentful – and very disinclined to make an effort again for that person.

Saturn is the Taskmaster of the Zodiac, a grumpy granddad, stern school principal and demanding boss, all rolled into one. Whatever sign he is he slowly but surely makes it socially inappropriate to act the wrong way (just think of the health “police” over the last couple of years he was in Virgo).

I thought about this when I read a blog post about a woman who was angry that Target had deleted her gift registry 90 days after her wedding, making it hard for her to write her thank you cards 11 MONTHS after getting married. Apparently she hadn’t kept any record of who gave what wedding gift which is just unbelievable.

Instead of getting sympathetic clucks of “you poor old thing”, almost all of the 219 replies absolutely ripped her to shreds for taking a year to thank people saying she was an “idiot”, a “jerk”, “lame”, “lazy” and so on. No-one let her get off the hook for being “too busy”.

There’s a real opportunity for (online) retailers to include a blank Thank You card with the gift so that the recipient can easily write a note of appreciation to their gift-giver. RedEnvelope used to offer this service, then stopped it.

I’d use it – wouldn’t you?

Argh! Your approaching wedding – so much to organize, so many details like flowers and table decorations to blow out the already stretched budget.

And then there’s all that tiresome and exhausting pounding of the pavement and malls to put together that all-important wedding gift list. It’s enough to have anyone reaching for the gin bottle!

Well here’s a nifty little UK website that should help keep the bottle at bay – at least, before the wedding at any rate (no guarantees for what happens afterwards).

Check out Not On The High Street for some innovative and original ideas to combine wedding gift lists with some of those necessary incidentals, which will simultaneously save your budget and your feet!

This much-hallowed online retailer scores top marks for originality. A staggering array of gorgeous products and practical services from over 1,500 of Britain’s most creative designers and businesses means you can include items such as table and venue decorations, flowers and even catering on your wedding gift list.

Not only will this take the pressure off the budget but your guests will feel more personally connected to the event, knowing they provided those beautiful urns of tulips artfully positioned around the venue, or the gorgeous decorative glass table centerpieces that everyone’s raving about.

Not On The High Street, which has proved extremely popular since it first appeared in March 2008, even has a wedding gift list consultant to you approach decor and gifts from a non-traditional perspective, saving you money in the process and adding a zing of originality to the event.

Cash gifts for weddings have been around for a long time, especially in many African and Asian cultures but perhaps it’s the more western association of cash with business transactions, and the phrase “cold hard cash” that makes us feel squeamish.

Apart from the fact your bride and groom know exactly how much cash you’re giving them which can be kind of embarrassing (especially if it’s not much!), you don’t tend to know how they’re going to spend it. Is it going towards your “rubber chicken” (aka wedding catering bill)? Will they splurge it on cocktails by the honeymoon resort pool?

A cash gift registry is nothing new, but DepositaGift.com caters for virtually any item (or service) that the couple may desire, even parts of their home, pushing the boundaries of possibility way beyond the once-traditional appliances and manchester.

Want a new bathroom cabinet? Enter the words “bathroom cabinet”, estimate the cost, upload a thumbnail pic of a desired cabinet, and it’s on your list for everyone to see.

Almost no item is too bizarre or non-traditional. For couples who are renovating, guests can symbolically direct their cash gift towards a particular part of the house. For example, they could help you have the mailbox, window frame or wine refrigerator of your dreams.

At a stretch, DepositaGift.com could even be considered environmentally friendly – there’s no need for wrapping paper as you’ll be ordering that item direct once you have enough cash.

As the giving and receiving of gifts, especially wedding gifts, is still generally considered a warm, fuzzy and very personal exchange, here’s a new development to the equation that might leave some of the more sentimental folk out there gasping at the impersonal cold-bloodedness of it all.

Introducing the new MyRegistry.com iPhone app. This snazzy little device allows brides-to-be, expectant mothers, and all other users of traditional gift registers, to simply scan the bar code of an item they happen to see in their more routine retail travels, without having to set aside valuable time to pound the malls and department stores specifically to make up their wish list.

“The world is your virtual department store” trumpets the app’s marketing, and since both shopping and technology are two things very close to the hearts of many people in the early 21st century, the device has a potentially long and rewarding career ahead of it.

The scanned items are automatically added to the gift registry, be it on Facebook or other more traditional locations, so the gift-buyers can still access the list in the usual way.

And if anyone is skeptical enough to point out that the app removes the gift-giver’s ability to shop around for the best price, you can reassure them that the device can now do that for them, as it can be used to compare prices from store to store and add the best priced item to the list. Simple, really.

Gives you a nice, warm, fuzzy feeling.

If you have more stuff than you can poke a stick at, you might prefer to ask your guests to give some or all of your wedding gifts to your favourite charities.

Justgive.org which teamed up with the I Do Foundation in November 2009, has a Wedding Center section that allows you to create your own wedding page and customise it with (cash) gifts given to your charity. Guests can donate through the registry or make a donation in your name.

You could ask for all of your gifts to go to one charity in particular to increase the donation pile, or you could pick and mix ones which take your fancy – maybe even create a parallel version of what you would normally request on a wedding registry.

Instead of kitchen utensils what about raising funds for a soup kitchen? Say no to techie gifts like iPads, and help kids to get in the know through schoolbooks in a developing country. Forget asking for a water filter – make sure people in impoverished areas have access to clean drinking water. Or replace your wish for a 3D-TV with a donation to the guide dogs…

When you’re putting your wedding gift registry together, it can be amazing what people think you should request.

Sometimes though, you’re in a sort of wedding-gift-auto-pilot mode because those are the sorts of things your parents received for their wedding however many decades ago and you think you should ask for it, too.

But, no. Seven of these items are things you’ll probably never use, which will create clutter AND which will use up your valuable wedding gift registry “real estate”. I promise, you’ll kick yourself later! And interestingly they’re all “c-words”…

Cake stand – how often do you make cakes – honestly? If you make them about as often as you have a dinner party or a fancy girls’ lunch, I’d say maybe once, twice a year, tops. This thing will be sitting in your screaming-for-space pantry, sullenly, and cakelessly. You can hire cake stands next time you’re going out all out.

Carafe – my grandparents have these. We don’t. We like to see what wine we’re drinking (although I know with my grandfather it is Jacob’s Creek shiraz of which he bought a crate’s worth back in the day and it isn’t getting any better with age). In the bad old days when Australian wine was an oxymoron, you used carafes to disguise the wine’s dubious origins and to give it some much-needed air. Now, if you bring a $50 bottle of wine to a dinner, you want to make damn sure everyone else sees the label you’ve just paid for. If it’s in a carafe, well, heavens(!) it could have come out of a cardboard box.

Casserole dish – not too many people make these type of meals anymore. If it’s winter and you’ve got a hankering for an old-fashioned casserole, borrow your mum’s. And then give it back washed the next day.

Cheese-slicer – these doo-dads finely slice your cheese. You can do the same thing with a knife.

Coasters – these usually go with placemat settings. Some people use them in a desperate attempt to avoid getting liquid circle marks. Maybe it’s just me, but I find everytime I use the square cork-based ones, my glass has created some sort of condensation which manages to adhere the glass base just long enough for me not to notice it’s temporarily attached itself until it smashes down right into the middle of my dinner. I hate coasters.

Cocktail shaker – We’re not in a Tom Cruise movie. Almost no-one drinks spirits anymore unless they buy them duty-free and all those drink-driving laws killed out boozy parties. You could use one as a funky vase though.

Crystal glasses – It’s only in Hollywood movies you see moguls and movie stars drinking from crystal glasses. Ours sit in the crystal glassware cabinet (yes, taking up more space), daring us to use them, knowing we’re terrified we’ll drop them or break them during hand-washing. And we’d find it hard to justify the $95 to replace a broken crystal wine glass for a set we don’t even use. They’re for fancy dinner parties, so guess what? We almost never use them…

What other useless wedding gifts do you usually see on a gift registry that will create clutter?

If putting together a wedding gift list is torture, at least you know with Green Bride Guide that it won’t cost the earth.

This US website is the most comprehensive resource of environmentally-friendly wedding ideas, products and services. Its gift registry helps couples save themselves and their guests time and money sourcing eco-friendly items as all of them have been pre-screened.

Couples (OK, it’s usually the bride as the groom is happy to stay out of it!) can search for interesting gifts by origin, add items made by fair trade artisans around the world, and select handmade or ethically sourced products.

You can also book your honeymoon at a hotel with a vegan restaurant (hmmm, aren’t you supposed to be on a god-awful diet before the wedding?), buy conflict-free diamond rings (note: that is of course the origin, not the size that avoids conflict), give your guests lovely wedding favours such as seedlings and boxed flower bulbs, and so much more.

The Green Bride Guide is the first green wedding gift registry to offer carbon-neutral shipping. When customers order packages, they calculate the carbon dioxide and other gases which contribute to the greenhouse effect and purchase carbon offsets from its partner, Brighter Planet. 

I think this type of registry would really appeal to Virgos and Aquarians in particular.