Please note: This company has now entered administration so has ceased business.
Happy Monday Morning Dotties! I remember last week someone asked is Happy Monday an oxymoron- is it for you? I always have mixed feelings on Mondays! I’m eager to get into work and excited, but part of me is sad the weekend is over!
Before we get into our very full week of blissful wedding inspiration, let’s spotlight Ms Polka Dot’s Directory!
We have some seriously incredible vendors in our directory (and we’ve just added a Photobooth Hire category due to popular demand!). I mean, have you seen our florists and their incredible bouquets? What about our cinematographers and their whimsical, beautiful wedding films? Perhaps you’re looking for a fantastic band for your guests to dance the night away with? We have all these and more in the pages of Ms Polka Dot’s Directory so do check it out!
I have to admit it took me a long time to come around to the idea of gift registries, but when, as a wedding guest I figured out I could get the marrieds to be a gift they really want and would definitely use (and personalise it with fun polka dot accessories.. perhaps) I soon came around. Which is why I think our vendor of the week Wedding Gifts Direct is pretty fantastic.
The first thing I love is that they price match – so guests don’t have to worry about pricing if they find the item for less elsewhere. They also offer bonuses every single month, great competitions, online, email, fax, in store and over the phone ordering, and you? You can set up the entire registry online and even get a lifetime discount of 20% off any purchases! If you’re looking at a registry of experiences, or would like the option of a wishing well – they can help you there too.
I love the flexibility of Wedding Gifts Direct and the fact it’s not only easy for you, but easy for your guests!
To get to know the Wedding Gifts Direct team a little better, we asked Samantha from Wedding Gifts Direct five questions in five minutes –
What is your favourite after five drink?
Cosmopolitan
Your favourite weekend getaway?
Hunter Valley
Favourite restaurant?
Neild Avenue
What can we find you eating for breakfast on a Sunday morning?
Eggs Benedict with Salmon, or Strawberry Pancakes!
Your favourite wedding story?
One of our lovely couples, Laura & Pater, had a very sweet story of how they got together – I have included this below:
How they met:
“Pete and I met in high school. He was quite and kept mostly to himself. I was loud and decided that he and I were going to be friends, whether he liked it or not.
6 years later, I realised that I shared the same feelings for him that he’d been secretly feeling for me for about 4 years. Problem was, it was just before I was about to move to London for up to 2 years. So, we did the long distance thing for 15 months and decided that if we could survive that together, we were destined to be together forever”.
How he proposed:
“Pete’s proposal was epic, so here’s the short, very short version…
I had been planning a cocktail party at my house and had 15 friends coming over for hors d’eouvres and drinks. That morning, Pete cooked me breakfast. I went to Pilates and came home to a clean house! We then went out for lunch at Warriewood beach. After lunch, Pete said that he was still hungry and wanted a smoothie from a particular place in Narrabeen. He tricked me and we ended up at a day spa receiving an hour long massage and an hour long pedicure! Thinking that it was a late birthday present, I suspected nothing. We got home and I was told that I had 15mins to get ready to go out for dinner somewhere nice. A taxi picked us up and took us the Opera House. We had an early dinner at Guillaume’s and I thought we’d be getting back to my cocktail party. Nup… after a quick stop off at a chocolate shop, we got a taxi to Star City where we saw Mamma Mia! We didn’t get home until 11:45 and I thought that all my friends must have gone home. Pete then took me up to a head land over looking Newport Beach where he’d had a friend set up a rug with bamboo flares all lit up. It was midnight when he got down on one knee and asked me to be his wife. When we got back to the house, my friends were all there to congratulate us and party on into the night! ”
Visit Wedding Gifts Direct’s page to find out more about our Vendor Of The Week. Wedding Gifts Direct is a member of Ms Polka Dot’s Directory
Looks like they have an excellent range of products to choose from.
I too was excited by Wedding Gifts Direct range, a key reason in selecting them for our registry. Unfortunatley, that is where the excitement ended, and disappointment kicked in. Of the products we placed on our registry, about 30% could not be ordered, as the supplier was out of stock, or a new model had superceeded the one we selected. We were able to use the credit from these gifts for other gifts, some of which were also unavailable. To get the gifts we liked and wanted, we had to pay additional money, over and above the credit from our guests. We were married in March this year, and still waiting for 3 gifts to be delivered. All in all, a frsutrating and testing experience. Don’t be fooled by the extensive range – in fact the depth of range is what lets them down. There is no way so many items can be in stock and available.
We also used Wedding Gifts Direct for our registry and they were fantastic!! They sourced hard to get products from New York as apart of the service, I am American and this made all the difference.
We received our gifts on time only one was unavailable and they upgraded me to a better model for free.
We had to exchange some of gifts as some of my guests did not use the registry, we had duplicates that Wedding Gifts exchanged without a fuss.
We also had a wishing well and received the money straight after the wedding. The items on the registry were bought in especially and they gave me free delivery in Melbourne. I was very happy with our register despite some of the unavailable items.
Hi Dotties,
We purposely don’t moderate comments on Polka Dot Bride (unless they are against our comment policy http://www.polkadotbride.com/blog-policies/) as we believe in providing a safe space for both vendors *and* brides to express themselves and their experiences.
That being said, we always invite the vendor to respond publicly and we also encourage brides (and grooms) to contact their vendors privately to resolve the issue.
Thank you for your post. We take any dissatisfaction/disappointment with our service very seriously and are sorry to hear of yours. Everything we do is aimed at giving our couples the best registry experience possible and we would appreciate the opportunity to talk through and solve these issues with you, including your backordered gifts. Your post is anonymous so we unfortunately have to ask you to email or call us (02 9555 9493) with your name and registry information.
It is difficult to address your comments properly as I do not have the facts of your registry at hand, however I do have a couple of comments:
1. Registries occasionally have discontinued and backordered product/gifts due to the (often extended) time between gifts being put onto the registry and the approval of the gift list by the couple sometime after the wedding date. The number of these gifts can be affected by the nature of the gifts themselves (how fashionable are they?) and the times in the year when manufacturers change/upgrade their ranges. We are only able to buy in product after the gift list’s approval where the couple has chosen the Gift Exchange Option. Please remember Wedding Gifts Direct does not control the availability of products/ranges in Australia, but we do go out of our way to source ‘must have’ gifts from alternative sources where possible.
2. Any additional money spent on gifts by couples is at their discretion and depends on their choice of additional/exchange gifts. Wedding Gifts Direct however offers couples discounts of up to 25% off the RRP of items as a matter of course, when completing their registry. Small amounts due by couples are often waived by Wedding Gifts Direct as we do understand the inconvenience/disappointment that discontinued gifts often brings.
3. Backordered gifts can take up to 6 months to arrive, and depends on various factors. We will gladly cancel backordered gifts in favour of more readily available gifts should the couple decide the wait is too long, as long as the item in question is not a special order where the delivery time was known and agreed upfront.
Lastly I would ask you to contact our Customer Service Manager at your earliest convenience with your name and registry information so we can address your frustration and disappointment.
I was not disappointed at all. In fact I can highly recommend Wedding Gifts Direct.We had guests to our wedding from New Zealand as well as Hong Kong and also interstate, so having an online registry was one less concern for us. As far as I am concerned it was a simple and straightforward process. We had our gifts delivered to Hong Kong and this went smoothly. In fact my sister is now using them and is very happy so far. (hence I am still loving and living Polka Dot Bride as I am her Maid of Honour and organizing everything!) Samantha was very helpful and responded quickly when we had queries. The inserts to go in the Wedding Invitations arrived promptly and were very well presented. After the wedding, the gifts arrived within the time frame given by our Consultant (Samantha) and where any gifts that were unavailable at the time, we were contacted with updates until they arrived (which was only a few weeks later).
I had the same problem with Wedding Gifts Direct, they seem to have a huge range of gifts available but when it came time to deliver my gifts almost half of them were not in stock! The owner(?) contacted me after I complained but her explanation of “we just can’t possibly hold that amount of stock, we are not a large enough company” didn’t really appease me. We were offered a credit as “dissappointed” was but I feel that this company is not being honest about their “range” of stock.
I also remember them advertising that they are the largest gift registry in Australia but that’s also not true they only have on small store somewhere in Sydney
Dear Lauren and disappointed
I can understand that you are both disappointed. Please note the response from Wedding Gifts Direct. However, no-one in a small business can be expected to carry what amounts to hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of stock at any one time. A medium business owner can often not predict which of their products will sell out and which will not. If you have been offered recompense, I would consider this to be very reasonable given the circumstances outlined in Point 1 by Wedding Gifts Direct. Please contact Wedding Gifts Direct if you have any issues – I’m sure they will only be too happy to help you.
I cant recommend wedding gifts direct highly enough! They made the whole gift registry process easy and enjoyable. They went over and above what was required and catered to all our requests happyily. I encourage all brides out there to use their service.
we used wedding gifts direct as they were so helpful – had guests from many places to ourwedding and even we had to travel there so it made sense to have our gifts delivered at a later date Emily was exceptionally warm and great at sorting out any swops that needed to be made some guests did not use the registry so we had double ups! hate when that happens!! we were excited when the boxes arrived and we opened our presents there were even more blessings for us! I can also highly recommend them went above and beyond. xx
We had a terrible experience with wedding gifts direct!! They charged our guests for gift wrapping and when the gifts arrived they were not wrapped 🙁 the ‘beautifully printed gift tag’ was a piece of paper and not attached or even in the same package as the items. We also had items on backorder and now 4 months after our wedding they are saying they are not available when we could easily buy it in another store. They are refusing to give a refund but are instead offering a credit note…. which is useless to us as we want the item our guests have bought.
Couldn’t be more dissapointed with the service and our guests spent so much on gifts so I would have expected a nicer experience
We had a terrible experience with wedding gifts direct!! They charged our guests for gift wrapping and when the gifts arrived they were not wrapped 🙁 the ‘beautifully printed gift tag’ was a piece of paper and not attached or even in the same package as the items. We also had items on backorder and now 4 months after our wedding they are saying they are not available when we could easily buy it in another store. They are refusing to give a refund but are instead offering a credit note…. which is useless to us as we want the item our guests have bought.
Couldn’t be more dissapointed with the service and our guests spent so much on gifts so I would have expected a nicer experience. I wouldn’t recommend them to any bride and groom.
Dear Resally Disappointed,
It is really unfortunate that you chose not to give your name so I am unable to investigate nor address the issues you raised. Please could I ask you to email me at [email protected] or [email protected] or call me on 1300 443 834 at your earliest convenience and give me the opportunity to make things right for you and change your opinion of Wedding Gifts Direct. Our couples satisfaction and happiness is paramount for us so I look forward to hearing from you.
Warm regards
Meg Worth
Customer Service Manager.
I would like to say a huge thanks to Lucinda who was our bridal consultant at Wedding Gifts Direct. We had an overseas wedding and our guests and family found the process simple and easy. Nothing was too much trouble for Lucinda and she even found items that were not on the site for us, brilliant service and I would have no hesitation in recommending Wedding Gifts Direct
Wedding Gifts Direct was absolutely wonderful! my consultant Lucinda was lovely and took the time and care to make the process as easy and pleasant for me as possible. All my gifts arrived only a few weeks after my engagement party and I am so excited to open them with my fiance. I would highly recommend this company as they have a wide range and are extremely flexible with their client