Real Weddings, Advice, & Inspiration

Catalyst Wedding Company highlights weddings by and for game-changers. We seek to amplify and empower voices and viewpoints that are usually missing from the Wedding Industrial Complex. We're a community of badass wedding professionals who love all things funky, fresh, diverse, unique, and personality-driven; we convene twice yearly for (un)convention, a collaborative workshop, styled shoot, and dinner party. We're also the publishers of Catalyst Wedding Mag, a resource for couples looking for inspiration and affirmation that doing things differently in wedding-world is not only ok, it's wonderful!

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1. What is the mission of Thankful Registry?

In a word, gratitude. Thankful's motto is "gratitude makes the world go round." It touches everything we do. And we want to play a part in reversing the bad reputation that wedding registries have built up recently.

2. What is Thankful Registry's origin story?

In my 20s, I found myself buying wedding gifts on registries for friends who were getting married. Those experiences were so impersonal and transactional I started to wonder if I could build something better. Before Thankful, I was a copywriter at design agencies working on big corporate websites and also small, fun brands with lots of personality. So I started with the tone I wanted the site to have. Since gift giving is so emotional, I knew the brand would be more about the relationships between people, and less about "stuff." That's what set us apart from the way retailers were doing registries.

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3. What is one of your favorite projects you've ever worked on at Thankful Registry?

I have two! One is this video we created showing the diversity and creativity of our customers:

The second one is the fundraising campaign we did for Too Young To Wed where we sold "100% Thankful" tote bags with all proceeds donated to the TYTW. They raise awareness and fight the critically important issue of child marriage. As a small business, it's the issue we decided early on to support however we can. You can read about that campaign here.

4. How are you a "wedding space disrupter"?

We're different because we don't think the same way other wedding registries do. We don't make money from the sale of stuff, so we don't push couples to add a lot of things they don't want or need to their registry. It's ingrained in our business model.

5. What three ingredients are necessary for a great day at your company?

A customer service mindset! Couples share their registry with their entire guest list, and we receive questions every day from wedding guests. The reality is an open platform registry like ours can be a new experience for a lot of people, so we make an extra effort to help.

6. What kind of couple makes an ideal client for your company?

The kind of couple who thinks of their registry as a courtesy for their guests, who is thoughtful about the gifts they're requesting, and who shares our belief that gratitude makes the world go round.