6 Things to Add to Your Wedding Registry if You’re Moving From an Apartment to a House

If your wedding is bringing with it a big move to a bigger living space, you get a double-congrats! Switching over to the increased square footage and additional privacy of a house is a strategic choice for the newly married, and it’ll open up a whole new world for things to add to your wedding registry, too! Because not only will the two of you no longer be fighting over apartment space—your belongings won’t be, either! Move over, do-it-all sheet pan, there’s a new class of kitchen gear moving in.

Here are my suggestions on things to add to your wedding registry if you’re moving from an apartment to a house with your new spouse.

Luxurious Linens

Now that you’ll have space to store it all, you can go all-in on your wildest bedding and towel dreams. Want that over-the-top faux fur throw that would take up practically your entire bedroom in your old apartment? Ask for it. Always dreamt of owning a few sets of great sheets and having—imagine this—spare sets in storage so you’re not a slave to the laundry machine once a week? Go for it. Obsessed with the thick, cushy bath sheets you always see in hotels? Add ‘em to the list! In addition to having more space to store and love all of this stuff, your new home probably has a better laundry arrangement than your apartment, so you’ll be better set up to care for these luxuries than you might have been in your old digs.

Organization Essentials

In apartment living, we tend to just jam all of our odds and ends into our one or two closets, throwing organization to the wayside in favor of hiding our clutter behind closed doors. It’s survival. But in a house, you’ll have more closets, perhaps even a basement, garage or attic, and spare rooms to store all your things, so you’ll be able to organize more intelligently and bring a lot more beauty and calm to these once-throwaway spaces. Among the best things to add to your wedding registry are those organization must-haves, from matching hangers that don’t ruin your clothes (a thing!), to baskets and bins and shelving, even jars and canisters and, heck, a label maker! You’ll be so glad you have it all when you come out of your post-wedding haze and feel the unshakeable urge to nest.

Art for your Walls

Investing in great art isn’t the best idea when you’re moving it from one lease to another, and risking it getting damaged. But once you have a house you’ll settle into for the long haul, it’s the perfect time to start curating that art collection you’ve always dreamed of! And, no more tacked-up posters for you guys—that’s apartment behavior. On your registry, ask for prints by artists you love and have always lusted over, along with high-quality frames to put them in. You’ll be so glad to have this grown-up approach to decor when you’ve got a whole house-full of walls to fill! And you’ll love how much more put together your space looks when you’ve got a curated art concept in frames, instead of a mish-mash of random wall-hangings taped up college dorm-style.

Design Services

Speaking of more space to fill, you might be feeling overwhelmed with all the new square footage you suddenly have to fill with furniture and decor, especially if you’re moving from a cramped apartment with furniture you’ve had since college. Consider asking for design services membership on your registry—there are tons of online services available now that don’t come with the insane price tag of hiring a professional interior designer. The services (try Havenly or Homepolish, to name a few) use photos and blueprints of your room, then match you with a designer who will work with your budget to create a design that speaks to you with a shopping list for all the stuff you need to bring the design to life. It’ll be something fun to look forward to after your wedding, once you’re all moved into your new house, and will give you inspo for other rooms of your house, too. You can simply create a cash fund on your registry and call it, “Interior Design Services for our New House!”

Area Rugs

More square footage = more floor to cover = more rugs, and rugs are expensive! Also, if you’re anything like me, your apartment rugs are probably in pretty ragged shape right about now. Rugs are a great big-ticket thing to add to your wedding registry (people can all contribute toward the cost of one, or generous family members can get one for you!), and a huge cost you won’t have to worry about when it comes to decorating your new home. In apartments, we tend to shy away from investing in things like nice rugs, because we simply don’t know what kind of space we’ll be looking at in the long term, don’t want to invest in something expensive that we’re sharing with roommates, or whatever. But your first home really is the time to make these investments—good-quality rugs not only pull a room together and make a house feel like home, they also will protect your floors (and your home equity). And if you get one or two on your registry, you’ll have lots of money left in your wallet for smaller expenses like lamps and decor! 

That Maybe Superfluous Small Appliance You’ve Always Wanted

Listen, a lot of people put KitchenAid Stand Mixers on their registries, even though they might’ve never even personally really wanted one or might never use one. But if a stand mixer—or espresso maker, or immersion blender, or air fryer—is something you’ve wanted forever but have held back on because of your miniscule cabinet space, now’s your time! Don’t talk yourself out of it just because it seems superfluous and you feel silly wanting an appliance that does only one thing. You’re moving to a house, with probably a lot more cabinet and counter space than you’ve ever had, and over the next few years or even decades, you’ll probably find yourself needing these random appliances more than you ever did when you were in bare-bones mode in your apartment. So go for it! Treat yourself to these seemingly random things to add to your wedding registry! It’s one less thing you’ll have to buy down the road, and after all, this is about getting what you want! You deserve that egg sandwich maker.