we registered for our bon voyage party.  gasp!  yup, we sure did.  and we got a lot of inquiries about it, so we thought we’d share it’s evolution with you.

forever ago, we found a cool site called myregistry.com and started using it to archive all the stuff we needed.  for example, if i read a blog post that said i needed a pac towel, i clicked this little link in my bookmarks bar and it automatically added it to our “registry.”  it was really convenient and it was the only place we could find that allowed you to add treasures from all over the internets (kinda like an amazon wish list, but not limited to amazon.)

once we decided to throw the party, we had a couple of people ask what we needed.  we thought, “hey, let’s just open up the registry.”  we added a few more things, got rid of the stuff we had already purchased, and included the link in our facebook invite.

of course we noted that there was no obligation, but since space in the boat is limited, if someone wanted to buy a gift, we wanted to let them choose from the stuff we knew we needed!  we also kinda’ figured that we’ve done our fair share of gift giving (showers, weddings, kids, graduation, birthdays, babies, fundraisers, etc.) and it wouldn’t be too out of line to ask for a few things in return (we didn’t register for our wedding ’cause it was a surprise!)

we also really loved the non-traditional-ness of it all.  registering for an extended vacation!?  how dare us!

overall, the response was positive and supportive.  people seemed to enjoy contributing to our adventure.  we scored so much cool stuff and it really helped us knock stuff off of our very long list of necessities.  i can’t wait to start taggin’ people in our pics as we start to use all of our new stuff!

opening our gifts was the icing on the bon voyage party cup cake, and yet another reminder of how wonderful our friends and family truly are!  thanks y’all!