Registry Fun

Yesterday, Wade & I registered at The Bay and Sears. It was fun (for me). I used to work at Sears, and knew how their registry worked. I assumed The Bay's was the same. For American and British readers, I will tell you a brief amount about both stores. Sears is a basic department store in Canada - unlike the American version, which is mostly hardware. The Bay is a bit of a Canadian institution, with a similar position as Macy's or Harrods (maybe not quite as "posh", but we're a little more laid back in Canada than the US or the UK). The only difference with The Bay is that the quality and "posh-ness" of each store depends on the market it is located in. For example, The Bay on Bloor Street in Toronto or at Bayshore in Ottawa has far nicer (and more expensive) than The Bay in Kingston.

I was surprised to see how much nicer The Bay's registry is. We registered at The Bay first. We walked in and sat down with one of their consultants, who explained the registry and gave a few suggestions. Yes, those suggestions are to increase the number of items we register for, but we followed some of her reccomendations when we thought it was useful, and did not use the recommendation when it was not. Also, for registering, we got 2 bridal magazines - the same magazine - one was the winter issues and the other was the spring issue. And we got 2 champagne flutes. I was very surprised. Then we got the scanner.

If you've registered with a scanner, you know how fun it can be. I let Wade use it, because I knew it would increase his enjoyment. Or decrease the likelihood of him getting bored. I picked out things we needed and things we liked, pointed, and he "shot".

After The Bay, we stopped at the food court on our way to Sears. At Sears, it was the same ol' drill, the one that I knew when I worked their in high school. Get the scanner, go scan. That was it.

It paled compared to The Bay's registry program, where we sat down and met with the consultant, were given advice, and so on.

Anyway, the day was fun. We're going to Home Outfitters (a division of The Bay that has a slightly different focus) to register there, too, later today.