Wedding registry site lists ‘wishes, not stuff’

We’ve seen a couple of Canadian businesses that aim to improve the gift-giving process: DreamBank, which lets people collect donations towards their dream purchases, and ECHOage, which does much the same thing for kids’ birthday parties. Now bringing the concept over to the world of matrimony is UponOurStar, a startup also out of Canada that aims to be a “wedding registry for wishes.” Couples about to be married typically provide a list of all the physical goods they’d like to receive, but on UponOurStar, they register instead their wishes and dreams. Once they sign up with the site, couples get a customizable web page to share with their wedding guests. There they can describe the wishes they’d love to have granted—”our first home,” for example, or “a college fund for our future family.” UponOurStar provides tasteful e-invitations to the site for guests, and when contributions come in, it notifies the happy couple by email. When the wedding date has passed, couples can log in and collect their funds via bank transfer. It’s free for couples to create a registry and send e-invitations to guests. A fee of 2.5 percent of donations is withheld for credit card processing, while a one-time amount of USD 15 is paid to the couple’s bank for the direct deposit. Guests, meanwhile, are charged a transaction fee of 6 percent. As the growing ranks of transumers increasingly seek experiences rather than things, it stands to reason that traditional services like the wedding registry will need to be updated. One to emulate for all the happy—but stuff-averse—couples in your neck of the matrimonial woods…? Spotted by: Stas Zlobinski