Hello friends and family! We would like to take a minute to mention a few things about our Registry. We recognize and appreciate the gift-giving tradition as one that stems from a heartfelt desire to contribute to the success of the new couple. However, as we look at our station in life, we see that we are fairly well-equipped to begin the rest of our lives together, and that many of those things that are helpful for typical newlyweds are not terribly critical for us. Frankly we are astonished that we could have already accumulated as much stuff as we have in the past 35+ years! Most of all, we sincerely want everyone to know that the presence of our guests is really all we want for our wedding - if you bring that, we will be truly thankful.

That being said, we do have hopes and desires for a fulfilling future together. One of those hopes is that we can help make things better in our world (small goal, we know) - for ourselves, for our families and for our communities. As such, we have identified a few charitable organizations that are meaningful to us for various reasons, and we have worked out mechanisms so our guests can join us in supporting those same charitable and non-profit organizations. Below you will find three different ways to give gifts in honor of our wedding, if you feel so inclined. We know this is perhaps not the most traditional of things to do, but we sincerely hope you will find it as meaningful as we will.

Justgive.org: (the image at left is a link) If you would like to make a gift to a charity or non-profit in honor of our wedding, we would appreciate that gesture just as much as any other. We have picked several organizations associated with "justgive.org" and if you go to their website, you can give a gift to those organizations we identified. We also provide comments as to why we find each organization meaningful, and we encourage you to look into those organizations regardless of whether you give in our honor or not. Should you give to these charities via our registry on justgive.org, they send us notification of your gift...and you also get a tax-deductible receipt! Click on the image at left, then at their website click on the "search for wedding registry" button and then search using either of our last names. Voila! Rural Children's Hope: (the image at left is a link) Rural Children's Hope (RCH) in Zambia is not associated with "justgive.org," - they are a small non-profit in Zambia without the means to effectively hookup with "Justgive.org." (Please take a minute to look at the RCH website.) We have developed some direct association with this charity, and we are particularly interested in assisting RCH. And so on our honeymoon after the wedding, we are going to Zambia for a month. While there, we will be visiting RCH in the African bush and delivering gifts of our own. Feel free to contact Kate or Alec if you have any interest in being included in that effort. Ten Thousand Villages:(the image at left is a link) Although we do have most of the amenities we need to start a household together, some items at Ten Thousand Villages are appealing to us. We especially like Ten Thousand Villages because they are a nonprofit fair trade organization that markets handcrafted products made by disadvantaged artisans from more than 120 groups in 35 countries. Ten Thousand Villages encourages sustainable economic development, fair wages and environmental conservation in these developing countries. And really, the thing we would like the most is the pleasure of your company at our wedding. We are really looking forward to it. Sincerely, Kate and Alec

This link should take you back to our wedding website.