Here’s another good idea, while you’re at it: The guys at GroomGroove.com suggest setting up a wedding registry on an otherwise uneventful weeknight. Turn off the TV, and make creating a charitable wedding registry a cool date. Says Golden: “It’s an opportunity to learn about the person you’re going to spend the rest of your life with. One recent groom chose Teach for America as his charitable organization, whereas his bride chose a charity that benefits artists.” You may be surprised to find out what charitable causes interest your fiancée.

I Do Foundation

Use this simple, free system to enable your guests to make secure online donations in support of the organization of your choice.  as their wedding gift to you.  You select the nonprofit organizations of your choice from their list of Recommended Partners, which includes Children, Youth, and Family, Community Development, Education, Environment, Health, and Social Justice.

Changing the Present

At Changing the Present, you can choose from over 1,500 donation gift opportunities, each at different princes, from adopting a tiger ($40) to sponsoring a year of schooling for one girl ($250) to clearing landmines ($50).

In addition to a charitable registry, you can order charitable wedding favors, which are small cards placed on your guests’ tables, saying that a donation was made in their honor. These favors include things like sandwiches at a drop-in center, materials for a struggling artist, assistance for deaf families, and more.

Wedding Channel

With a Wedding Channel registry, you can have your cake and eat it too. They will make a donation to your charity of choice every time someone uses WeddingChannel.com to purchase you a gift from one of your registries (in partnership with the I Do Foundation).

Charity Choice

Use their online wizard to create your own personalized webpage, customize with your favorite charities, buy bridal shower and party favors as a special honor for your guests, or give an elegant customized certificate as a charitable presentation to your wedding party.

Heifer Gift Registry

Help end hunger and poverty with gifts of livestock and training. With a Heifer Gift Registry, your gift will help families around the world become self-reliant and be able to provide for themselves, their families and their community.  You can choose from goats, water buffalo, chickens, llamas, camels, and much more. In exchange for their livestock and training, families agree to give one of its animal’s offspring to another family in need, so that this becomes the gift that keeps on giving.

Don’t Go Crazy

You only need to register at two or three stores you love. Choose a national department store or chain that has lots of household basics; add a local specialty store if you want to. For your guests’ sake, you may want to choose stores that are low-, medium-, and high-end, so that there are gifts in a variety of price ranges to choose from.

Do Register Ahead of Time

Try to complete your registry a few months before the wedding. This will give guests time to purchase gifts for the big day, but also for your engagement and a shower.

Don’t Put it in Your Invitation

Once you have registered, give the information to immediate family and the wedding party, and let them spread the word. If you are asked where you have registered, it is fine for you to tell, but it is not proper to include registry information in a wedding invitation. Registry information can be included on a wedding website, as long as the actual name of the store is not included on the same layer; organize your website so that guests must click down one level to find the details.

Do Register for Enough Gifts

Register for more gifts than you have guests, so there will be plenty of items to choose from. As mentioned above, register for gifts in a wide range of prices, or choose individual items rather than sets, as with pots and pans, for instance. It is fine to put a few expensive items on your registry, but balance them with equally lovely options that are more affordable.

Don’t Ask for Money

While it’s still considered tacky to ask for money directly, financial registries try to make this less awkward; for example, couples can now register online for stocks, honeymoon expenses, and even toward a down payment on a house.

Do write Thank You Notes Right Away

If your registry doesn’t automatically notify you when a gift has been purchased, review your registry every few weeks, and more frequently as the wedding approaches. Use your updated registry to help you keep up with writing thank-you notes.

Don’t Limit Yourself

Registry expert Mary Rose Gearon offers the following advice: “Don’t think just about your lifestyle as it is today. You’ll be entertaining more in the years to come, so create a wish list of items: a platter for your first Thanksgiving dinner or champagne glasses for a New Year’s toast. Keep those special occasions in mind; it’s a wonderful way to include loved ones in those important milestones.”

Don’t Forget to Register for the Basics

Funky bedspreads and whimsical wall hangings are well and good, but don’t forget the more useful – though duller – basics, such as measuring cups, can openers, garlic press, spatulas, kitchen timer, mixing bowls, knives, cookware, storage containers, etc.

But there are lots and lots of other options out there. Like goats. Did you ever think of registering for goats? Unless you plan on moving to a farm or really want to make your own goat cheese, chances are you haven’t thought about it. But one amazing couple, as reported by A Practical Wedding, wanted to do good with their registry.  Instead of using the opportunity to just build their own home, they chose to help other people strengthen their homes as well. (No need to give up your own wedding gifts, this is IN ADDITION TO the traditional household registry items!)

Aimee and Mihn called it The Goat Project. Aimee saw the effects of this program personally while in Uganda. It is run by TPO Uganda (a local Ugandan NGO that provides psychosocial support and mental health care to communities, families and individuals in conflict and post conflict settings), and administered in the U.S. by the Polus Center for Social and Economic Development.  In their own words, here’s how the program works:

Children with special needs in refugee camps and rural villages throughout east Africa often are hidden from society, ignored or abused and considered cursed. An announcement is made in the villages that a goat will be given by TPO to any special needs child, which provides visibility to the families so that proper care and support may be given. Families are taught the actual potential and limitations of their children, and often realize they are not alone, as other families with special needs children also become visible. Community is engaged in dialogue and learning, and attitudes slowly transform. The goats provide nutritious and necessary milk and, after bred, food for families in dire straits. Finally, the child, who now owns a goat, has status within the family and community, and a small charge to care for and love. The ripple effects have been astonishing. All for a $45 goat!

Did anyone purchase a goat for Aimee and Mihn? Oh yes! And what did the guests have to say? Although some were  skeptical at first, in the end they LOVED it!

We received goats all right, plus a ton of animated phone calls and giddy emails from our loved ones, telling us how excited they were about their gift to us. Even at our reception, right on the dance floor, we had friends and family eagerly sharing their goat gifts with glee! How happy is that?! We also could have never anticipated the extent of our own excitement. The first time we received a certificate saying that our friends had donated goats in honor of our upcoming marriage, Aimee cried. We knew at that moment that our wedding was extending far beyond ourselves.

And I think that is a really beautiful thing. Because a wedding should be a time to extend beyond ourselves. Creating a marriage and building a home is a beautiful, personal thing, but it is a million times more beautiful when it touches and enlightens the world we live in.

“I was watching the news the other day,” says cmamy, “And they were doing a story on weddings and their costs. It seems the national average for a wedding is $28,000 and they were featuring a couple who had trimmed the costs and had managed to have a wedding for only $14,000.  To me, this is still high.” No kidding, especially since this couple managed to tie the knot for under $200!

OK, so maybe most brides want something a bit more elaborate on their wedding day than champagne and cake for two. But the fact is that spending thousands of dollars on a wedding is something that is less appealing than ever to couples marrying today. Even brides who can afford to splurge are realizing that money can be more wisely spent.

Fro example one message board bride says that she and her husband sometimes watch “platinum weddings” and think, “For that amount of money I could get a new house, fix this one up to rent, replace our cars, and sock away some for later in the golden years!”

“Money doesn’t always buy wedding happiness,” and weddings don’t have to be expensive to be beautiful and memorable. Less is the new more.

Jo Ann Woodward of Schwartz & Woodward Event Planning (Houstan Chronicle) thinks that brides are learning to create a realistic budget and manage their money better. “They are picking and choosing and prioritizing what is really important to them.”  Although some brides are reluctant to “cut corners,” the most common thing brides are cutting is the size of the guest list.

Other couples are choosing to give charity rather than wasting money on themselves. When Lisa Jones look back, she says she gets sick just thinking about all that money spent on one day. “I tried to calm myself down by remembering that the memories will last a lifetime, but it was still overwhelming, given how many people are suffering in the world. So I decided I had to use my wedding for greater good.”

One idea is to cut the wedding favors and make a charitable donation instead. You can leave a placard at each table saying, “In lieu of wedding favors, the bride and groom have made a donation to (charity name).”

Other ideas include sending left-over meals to a soup kitchen, and donating your flowers to a hospital or nursing home. Knowing that your hard earned money is going to a worthy cause will make you feel better than the poshest of wedding can ever do.

Saving your sanity and planning for the future is a worthy cause too. “If you spend less money, it’s less stress,” says new bride Mairi Cox. “When you’re in the mind-set already and you’re counting gas and everything, you just realize how everything adds up. You kind of realize well, if we don’t have 100 bouquets of flowers it will be fine. It just puts it in perspective.”