9 Items Newlyweds Regret Not Putting on Their Registries

Peek at any wedding registry, and you’ll find the usual suspects: a standing mixer, a fancy coffee machine, maybe even the waffle maker that the pair envisions they’ll use every Sunday morning. (From personal experience: It’s going to get dusty very quickly.)

But what about all those items that married couples wish they had put on their registries? We asked wedded folks about their gift request woulda-coulda-shouldas.

Angelique Santomauro and her husband didn’t bother registering for social gathering essentials like wine glasses and serving platters when they got married two years ago since neither of them tended to host get-togethers in their previous relationships. But now she thinks they should have asked for those items so that they could entertain as a couple (in non-pandemic times, of course). 

When Rachel Kapur and her husband registered for their wedding last year, they remembered to snag fancy plates and scotch glasses, then placed them in storage for their future house. But once COVID-19 hit, the couple wasn’t able to move out of their New York City apartment. She regrets not also asking for items like a casual dish set that she’d actually be able to use in current times. 

Marie Tachouet Forman says she and her husband had always planned on getting a puppy—and during their first year of marriage, they did just that. But what they didn’t plan for: so much shedding. As a result, she wishes she had registered for a strong vacuum.

The registry that Megan Martin and her wife set up before their June 2016 wedding included a honeymoon fund and a lot of household decor—found object art, bedding, pretty serveware. But one guest went off registry and gifted a nonstick pan, and another guest skipped the registry and offered up a meat thermometer, and Megan says she uses both of those items all of the time. Now she thinks she should have registered for more of those kinds of useful kitchen items. Dedicating a bit more of the registry to the honeymoon fund wouldn’t have hurt either, she says.

NC Eakin Rodriguez and her husband decided when they got married in 2017 to not register for nice bedding and towels. The pair had more disposable income at the time, she explains, and didn’t realize how much better versions cost. While the couple is pleased with their registry gifts—which included honeymoon contributions and glass tupperware—Rodriguez says, if she could do it again, she would have added linens to her registry as well.

Ryan Cook says he and his wife registered for so many things before they got married in March. They asked for dishes and towels. They even got a de-piller for sweaters. But Ryan says he should have added one more thing to that list: shelving—as in, quality slabs of wood that they could hang in their home and also take to their next one.

In retrospect, Zoe Zorka thinks she and her husband should have put a high-quality mattress on their registry for their March 2018 wedding—or at least asked for money that they could have put toward it. After all, they use a mattress during one-third of every day! 

As they were building their registry prior to their July 2019 wedding, Gennifer Rose and her husband focused on functional items and decor for inside their home. Now that they’re spending so much time outdoors, she wishes she had registered for items that would maximize her outdoor space—planters, furniture, and anything else that could make the area more livable—so it could be a functional extension of her home. 

Tyler Cassacia and his husband had already been sharing a home for a decade when they got married in September 2019, and since they felt like they had a set-up house, they decided to hold a gift-free wedding. Tyler says he honestly doesn’t regret not having a registry. Every once in a while, though, he says he’ll notice a friend’s Thanksgiving roasting pan or fancy knife set and half-jokingly think, “Yeah, it would be nice to have those.”

The Apartment Therapy Weddings vertical was written and edited independently by the Apartment Therapy editorial team and generously underwritten by Crate & Barrel.