I would like to recommend "The Alternative Wedding List", an online wedding list service with a difference!

Using this list, couples sign up to gifts of donations to various charities - instead of the usual toasters and kettles! There are no charges to couples for registering a list. Take a look at this page for an example of how your wedding gift list could look.

Charities you can donate to include Breast Cancer Care, British Heart Foundation, FARM-Africa, PDSA, Samaritians, Sense, St. John Ambulance, Terrence Higgins Trust and War on Want (more charities are listed here). This service really appeals to me and it is no wonder that since its launch in March 2004 it has gone from strength to strength.

There are a variety of great reasons why couples are choosing to use this an alternative to the usual wedding gift lists:

♥ Many couples already have everything in their homes that they could possibly need.

♥ Increasingly, couples are looking for something different and want to stand out from the crowd.

♥ Lots of couples want to feel good about their choice of gift list.

♥ The range of charities that participate provides a variety of list options for couples and means guests have a grest choice of charities to donate to rather than just one.

More about the Gifts:

Gifts range in price from £10 upwards. Each gift purchased represents a donation to the charity whose gift a guest has selected. Example gifts include:

♥ £27 pays for a gift to Sight Savers International to allow them to pay for a contaract operation for a child in Bangladesh,

♥ £50 buys a gift to Save the Children to allow them to buy a set of winter clothes for a child in Serbia.

♥ £20 covers the costs of a Marie Curie Cancer Care nurse for an hour in the home.

♥ £100 enables Help the Aged to make an older person's home safe and secure.

♥ £100 also enables Barnardo's to pay for an activity day for children living with HIV.

It is so easy to create an Alternative type of Wedding List:

Couples simply have:

♥ To register online and select one of the groups of charities that we've put together.

♥ Send their guests details of where their list is held.

♥ To logon to their list to view purchases and messages from guests, download details onto a PDF at any time and then receive final confirmation of total donations to each charity.

It really couldn't be easier!

The Alternative Wedding List is part of Give It Limited, a non-profit making set-up founded by Andy Hickey. Their main goal is to generate incremental charitable donations for a broad group of UK registered charities. It is important to remember that:

♥ They pass on 100% of the value of donations made through the service to the charities.

♥ They use the Gift Aid (an extra 28% of the value of eligible donations) to fund the operation (website, card processing, management, advertising) and the target is to use less than half of this money. Whatever's left also gets passed onto the charities.

♥ There are no upfront fees or other charges for the charities.

Finally his type of charity gift lift isn't just for weddings, other sites operated by Give It Limited are:

GiveIt.co.uk - The online 'individual gift' service, where you can make a one-off selection of a gift to celebrate someone's birthday, a wedding, Christmas or any event you care to think of.

TheAlternativeGiftList.co.uk - Here you can turn your big day into a special occasion for even more people than you and your family and friends

The AternativeChristmasList.co.uk - Would you like your family, friends or work colleagues to spend their cash on something other than a pair of socks for you this christmas? If so this is the site for you!