Gift Registries for International Guests
UPDATE on the below: We cancelled our JL registry due to concerns about shipping charges 🙁 Our Mylist Dubai based registry remained though and we set up a manual registry with Crate & Barrel/Mall of Emirates for our Dubai guests. They worked a treat, we now have some really lovely new things for the home.
Hi lovelies,
Sorry I have been a bit awal, I’m organizing an exciting event for Bride Club ME and it’s taking up all of my time, along with everything else, should be worth it though 🙂
I know I promised an update on our ‘legal’ wedding, but I’ve decided to hold off until I get some images back for you. In the meantime, I have been marching forward with our BIG wedding plans for November.
Yesterday, I completed putting together all our invites, signed and sealed, yay! I also received our gift registry inserts from John Lewis/UK, which we slotted into our invites. I’m giving our first batch out at my fiancés 30th Birthday this weekend.
I thought I would tell all you lovely ladies about a few gift registries that have come across. Now, being expats, many of our guests live abroad and will be travelling to the UAE for our weddings, you don’t want guests lugging gifts around and you probably don’t want to end up with a bunch of things you don’t actually need, so, why not set up a convenient gift registry?
Unfortunately, certain well known and popular stores in the UAE are not as advanced as the UK, USA, etc when it comes to gift registries and it’s quite frankly frustrating, so it forces us to look elsewhere.
Adam and I have set up two registries, one based here in Dubai Mylist.ae and one based in the UK Johnlewisgiftlist.com. Our Dubai registry with Mylist consists of mainly of couple experiences such as a spa day and romantic dinners for two and our John Lewis registry consists of things we really do need for the home. We will be setting up a new home in December so we could do with revamping what we have.
Mylist.ae has many partners here in the UAE and your guests can buy you anything from affordable mugs to exclusive nights away at the Banyan tree, it’s really easy to use and of course it’s based here in Dubai, unfortunately Adam and I couldn’t find much on there that we really needed for the home, hence our reasoning for setting up with John Lewis too. We have included details of our Mylist gift registry on our wedding website.
John Lewis have been great with us, even though they are based in the UK, they will be shipping all our gifts over to us in one go and have also sent us inserts with our gift list number to include in our invitations, the process of choosing our gifts was easy (although a little time consuming) and enjoyable.
To be honest, I was not even going it mention gifts at all on our invitations as I felt guilty, guests are already spending a small fortune travelling to Dubai, but I have been informed via word of mouth that family members want to gift us and would like to know what we need.
Anyway, I have been really impressed with Mylist.ae and Johnlewisgiftlist.com and would highly recommend them both, Mylist more so for both British and non-British expats and John Lewis for British expats with guests travelling in.
I hope this has been useful to you somehow, in amongst my usual rambling, he, he!
Back on Thursday
Ciao for now
Rio x
Hi there. Wondered if you would mind sharing how much John Lewis are charging for delivery to Dubai? We are getting married in the UK but live in Dubai. I’m also concerned about customs & inspection charges at this end so would be great to hear your experience when you receive your gifts? Thanks.
Hi Clare. Sorry for the late response. I have just gotten over my own wedding and then the FLU! Grrr! Any how, we cancelled our John Lewis registry in the end, because we were worried about the shipping charges. We just stuck with our Mylist registry and then set up a manual registry at Crate & Barrel in the Mall of Emirates for our Dubai guests. It worked well, we now have some lovely new things for the home. Hope this helps xx