Hands down, Crate and Barrel was the winner of the day. I knew it would be. Heeding the advice of engaged couples before us, we made sure to arrive at 9am sharp to get the day started right! As soon as we walked in we were greeted by platters of strawberries and cheese, chocolate fondu, and my personal favorite, mimosas! We quickly walked to the front desk and were greeted by several employees, each nicer than the next. They individually took us aside to hang up our coats, explain the process and hand us our scanner. We were off! Surprisingly, FI and I made civil decisions regarding all things housewares. We pondered over place settings, platters, serving platters and citrus graters with ease. Amongst our in-store travels we noticed a chef had begun preparing breakfast sandwiches and smoothies. We were in home-goods heaven. When we'd finally eaten our fill, we circled the store a couple times to make sure we didn't miss anything. From there, we found a sales associate who helped us load our registry onto their website for all to access.
Things I loved: Everything. The food was great. The drinks were great. It wasn't crowded. And the salespeople were so lovely. Nobody gave us any sales pitches or hard sells and we were left to peruse the store at leisure. There was a representative from some knife company there as well and she was the same...no pressure sell, which I really appreciated. We even received a cute little vase as a party favor upon departure! I couldn't recommend attending a registry party at Crate & Barrel enough!
Things I didn't love: Um...hmm...we parked on the wrong side of the mall and had to walk a bit far to get to the store? Does that count? Okay, in reality, nobody ever explained any benefits (discounts, etc.) that we would be entitled to by registering. I easily looked this up on line, but in all fairness I'll mention it here.
Macy's was a bit of a different experience. By this time we were really tired and getting hungry again. We arrived in the housewares department and found the bridal registry section where an attendant was able to immediately assist us in setting up our registry. We sat and chatted for a few moments while she collected our basic information. After that was out of the way, she explained the benefits of having a registry with Macy's and gave an at-length explanation of how opening a Macy's charge card could save us even more money. She didn't push it on us, which I appreciated. We received our scanner and we were off! Our first stop was luggage. We knew we desperately needed to register for luggage as the last time we showed up at the airport for a family trip we were carrying our belongings in plastic grocery bags. No joke. From there we registered for towels and bed linens and then rounded out the registry with appliances like stand mixers and blenders.
Things I loved: They have an actual sit-down area where you can speak one-on-one with a consultant about the benefits we are entitled to and the gifts we are eligible to receive. We were never bothered by any sales associates during the process.
Things I didn't love: No food, no drink. We kept having scanner problems. Items were difficult to scan because you had to search for bar-codes. No sales associates ever came around to make sure the process was going smoothly.
Overall, the day was really great, but the big difference came in providing the food and drink at Crate, along with the fact that the entire store appears to be designed with the registering couples in mind. Barcodes and product information was readily available. At Macy's, it seemed as if registering couples were a bit of an afterthought and it was quite difficult to find the actual product you wanted amongst all of the boxes and then find the barcode to scan. Registering for towels meant you actually had to unfold the item you wanted to be able to scan it. We had to do this multiple times and it was frustrating. Plus, their scanner wasn't as user friendly.
We're pleased that we were able to register for some really great things as well as keep price-points varied to appeal to all of our guests.
How was your registry experience? Where did you register?
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