Linda Matchan
The Boston Globe

The wedding is just a few days away. Wow! Many people are asking about registries ... if you cannot think about what to get us, consider making a contribution to the canoe!

– From Tina Deck and Jason Yarrington’s online wedding registry.

Before Jason Yarrington and Tina Deck got married last August, they signed up at a couple of bridal registries.

They requested wine glasses, knives, and a coffee maker at Crate & Barrel. They registered for sheets, pillows, and a vacuum at Bed, Bath & Beyond.

Then they really got into it. They posted a wish list on felicite.com, an online gift registry service, for a 16-foot canoe and tickets for Red Sox and Celtics games. (They didn’t luck out on the tickets, but friends did chip in on the $959 canoe. "They were really psyched about it," says Yarrington, 32, a Salem, Mass. computer systems administrator.)

Not so long ago, aunts and grandmas would have gasped at such audacity. Couples who registered for wedding gifts got the word out discreetly, via mothers or maids of honor. Besides, wedding registries were not for luxuries like canoes, but important things like monogrammed silverware or cut crystal goblets or banded Lenox china dinnerware - household necessities meant to set a proper style and tone for married life.

"Even the most casual way of living . . . follows certain accepted codes and conventions in carrying out the amenities of hospitality," Marjorie Binford Woods and Justine Feely wrote in their 1955 guide for "young marrieds," called "Off to the Right Start in Choosing Your Household Treasures."

These conventions probably wouldn’t have included a two-week, $5,000 honeymoon in Sicily, which happens to be the gift preference of Noah Shaw and Karen Barone of Cambridge, who are getting married in September. They signed up with an online honeymoon registry service, HoneyLuna.com.

They wouldn’t have included an "acupuncture start-up fund" ($1,000) for the groom, a budding Boston-area acupuncturist engaged to an artist; she picked out $240 worth of stretcher bars for making canvases. They also registered on felicite.com for a $1,400 bicycle fund, noting on the website that his got stolen and hers "needs some serious work."

Choices, choices. There’s the Boston couple who used felicite.com to request $100,000 toward a house; and the policeman in Arizona who asked for a Glock 33 pistol ($499) and a $25 under-armor shirt. ("It’s supposed to make it much more comfortable to wear," he explained in the "description" box.) There is the couple from Brookline who registered for two $3,000 college funds, plus some books and a subscription to Foreign Affairs magazine.

If you haven’t gotten married or been to a wedding lately, you might be startled to encounter the new wave of bridal registries. Yes, brides still meet with consultants at Tiffany & Co. or Bloomingdale’s to ascertain their lifelong bone china needs, but more likely they - and their fiances - are running around stores like Crate & Barrel or Linens ‘n Things using scanning guns to zap the bar codes on the gifts they’ve picked out, creating a computerized gift list their guests can buy from without setting foot in the store.

They’re setting up registries at multiple retail stores - REI, Pottery Barn, Home Depot - where couples have been known to request faucets, knobs, drawer pulls, brass locks, mops, even a jacuzzi tub, according to Mike Lively, store manager of the West Roxbury Home Depot.

They’re registering for honeymoons at Garber Travel; video cameras and television sets at Target; bottles of wine at a wine wedding registry in Monterey (terranovafinewines.com); even, in the case of one couple, a $6,000 hydroelectric generator, said Hans Xu, vice president of marketing for felicite.com headquartered in Greenwich, Conn. That website, a personal shopping service, also lets couples register for unique gifts such as pottery by local artisans, donations to charities, and ecologically correct products such as recycled glassware and organic linens.

They’re creating customized websites on TheThingsIWant.com or FindGift.com; or cutting right to the chase at Greenwish.com, where they can register for cash and stocks. "Whether you have already picked the house of your dreams or want to grow your financial portfolio, you can register in just a few minutes and receive cash gifts in your bank, brokerage, or credit card account," the Greenwish website states on its wedding page.

They’re registering for commitment ceremonies if they’re gay, at stores as steeped in tradition as Bloomingdale’s and Tiffany & Co., one of the few high-end gift shops in the area that has resisted scanning-gun technology. Indeed, gay and lesbian couples are considered "extremely high-end" customers at The Registry at Bloomingdale’s, said Christopher Willis, bridal manager of the Chestnut Hill store. "We are very proud to have a registry for them."

Diane Forden, editor-in-chief of Bridal Guide magazine, said the face of bridal registries started changing about five years ago. "The purpose has changed," she said. "Years ago, there were registries, but I don’t think that many brides did register. And if they did, they went with their moms to one store and registered for traditional gifts - china, silver, and crystal."

Now, said Forden, surveys show that 99 percent of brides are registering for bridal gifts, at an average of three separate places.

"They are outfitting every room in the house," she said. "They’re increasingly registering for electronic goods. Registering for a home mortgage is a definite possibility for couples today. And over 88 percent say they are going to register with their fiance. When you’re both going together, he is definitely having some input. I think guys like the idea that they can register for stereo equipment, TVs, and digital cameras."

"To be able to manage your purchases online is a must these days," said Kristin Savilia, director of gift registry services for Linens ‘n Things. "Customers love the scanning guns. They love the websites. Everything is about convenience."

They also, apparently, love the options.

"We’ve been living together for five years now. It’s not like we are forming a whole household infrastructure," said Noah Shaw, 26, a recent law school graduate who registered for the Sicily honeymoon with his wife-to-be. "If it weren’t for (HoneyLuna.com), we probably wouldn’t be going on a honeymoon. We don’t have money to do something like that. We’d rather have two weeks in Sicily than have a set of flatware."

Sherianne Shuler, a communications professor at the University of Alabama who teaches a course on the history and culture of weddings, has a more cynical view of the registry phenomenon. "What started out as an opportunity for a community to come together and help a young couple get their start in life has turned into a greedy free-for-all," she said. "It’s a chance for a bride and groom to imagine everything they might possibly want and put it out as their wish list. It’s all part of the consumerist frenzy we are into right now as a society."

There may be no turning back. Even third-generation etiquette expert Peggy Post, author of the fourth edition of "Emily Post’s Wedding Etiquette," has come around to thinking that registries for honeymoons or mortgages are acceptable "as long as you meet the principles of being considerate. It’s very important to remember that it is a guest’s choice whether or not to use it. It is an option."

Still, the new way of registering remains perplexing to people like Alicia Haley of Holliston, who, on a recent Saturday, was accompanying her future daughter-in-law, Melissa Halasz, 27, of Boston, as she zapped her way around the Crate & Barrel store in the Natick Mall with a scanning gun.

Haley, who has been married for 33 years, still has fond memories of the one-of-a-kind, unsolicited gifts she received, like the his-and-hers champagne glasses she and her husband used at the wedding "and have used every year since on our anniversary. And to this day, every time I take out a silver dish or crystal bowl, I think of the person who gave it to me."

She considers today’s style of registering "gauche" and "very impersonal." Nevertheless, she has been encouraging Melissa to register to make it easier for guests to find a gift.

"They’re so accustomed to the Internet," she said. "I’ve succumbed to the pressure of the time." •