Congratulations to Stephanie & Zack, winners of this year's SimpleRegistry Member Story Contest! The newlyweds have won a free iPad Mini.
A big thanks to everyone who shared their wonderful wedding registry stories. Stay tuned as we'll post the Top 10 submissions in the coming weeks.
Meanwhile, read a few highlights from their winning entry below.
"When my husband and I got engaged, we were in an extreme long distance relationship. While I was in Germany, he was in the United States. We knew that we would both be moving to New York City after two years apart, and decided to get married there as soon as we were back together. As a result, our wedding planning process was hectic, confusing, and accomplished via e-mail, skype, and sporadic trips across the Atlantic. Creating a registry with SimpleRegistry was one of the easiest -- and best -- decisions we made during that time.
We also loved that we were able to break down big gifts -- like a couch for our new place -- into smaller contributions. Ten of our friends, most of whom live scattered around the country, ended up contributing to the couch. Now they all have a special connection to our first apartment together!"
"But the best part about SimpleRegistry was that it allowed us to combine traditional items with experience gifts like contributions to our honeymoon in the Great Smoky Mountains.
A lot of other experience registries I've seen make you pick certain experiences or nail down exactly what you want before you ask for it. But when I was finishing a masters degree, applying for jobs, planning a wedding, and moving halfway across the world, the last thing on my mind was planning a precise itinerary for my honeymoon. We wanted the trip to be carefree and relaxing, and stressing out about it was not on the agenda.
With SimpleRegistry, we were able to create a generic "honeymoon" gift option, allowing us to decide how to spend the money once we were in Tennessee -- whether on a nice dinner out in the small town of Gatlinburg or on two tickets to ride the coasters and hear the southern gospel music festival at Dollywood."
To read amazing stories from last year's finalists, click here.