Go to the mobile version of this Web site.

Login | Contact Us | Site Map | Paid archives | Electronic edition | Subscription Questions | Extras

Winter: Some save a piece of the wedding cake for the needy

Published June 24, 2006 at midnight

Text size  

More Entertainment Columns & Blogs

More stories »

When it comes to wedding-gift registeries, repeat after me:

I don't.

Call it lack of breeding, but a compulsory trip to the department store to pick up a prescribed $65 seafood fork or a teacup in the couple's china pattern is a ritual I just can't get behind for many reasons, most of them selfish.

Giving the couple cash instead seems just as personal, and certainly more efficient.

But recently I read about a new wedding registry with a twist.

On this registry, a St. Louis couple asked for goats and sheep for needy families in Palestine and Jordan and medical care for Iraqi children injured by the war.

Yes, I know what you're thinking: Gift-wrapping could be tricky.But spreading the wealth a little strikes me as an idea whose time has come.

By the middle of this week, friends and family of the couple had given seven goats and sheep at $20 a head, 27 $20 donations to Medical Aid for Iraqi Children and eight $20 donations to a wedding fund for Palestine refugees.

Not that newlyweds Jenny Elliot, 24, and Justin Alexander, 27, overlooked themselves.

They tied the knot last Saturday, and as you read this, they're honeymooning in St. Lucia, a trip paid for in large part by friends and family via the same registry where Jenny and Justin asked for the goats.

They used honeymoon registry, hailed as one of the most successful online wedding start-ups of the decade. Couples who register here don't want toasters and china - they want honeymoons. The company breaks trips into affordable pieces so that Aunt Sally can give the couple a $75 snorkeling outing, for example, or a $40 chunk of the airline ticket.

For globe-trotters like Jenny and Justin, TheBigDay made sense.

They met in Palestine last year. She was studying Arabic in Jordan, and he was serving in the West Bank with U.N. Christian Peacemaker Teams.

They saw firsthand how critical a single goat or sheep is to many families who rely on subsistence farming, said Natasha Biasell, a spokeswoman for TheBigDay.

Jenny and Justin were the first couple to ask for charity donations at the site. Sharing some of their wedding wealth just seemed like the right thing to do.

It may be my imagination, or perhaps my unhealthy fascination with supermarket tabloids, but an increasing number of celebrities seem to be moving in the same altruistic direction.

Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt turned some proceeds of their baby-photo shoot over to Namibia hospitals. George Clooney recently spent five days in Darfur with a cameraman to help publicize the plight of 2 million refugees.

The cast and crew of The Constant Gardener set up a charity to try to improve conditions in Kenyan slums after filming in that country.

Singer Bono and former rock musician Bob Geldof have made careers out of raising funds to stamp out Third World poverty.

How much, in the end, do they help?

"Overall, any effort by a prominent person or celebrity to raise awareness is good. Their actions reinforce the message that we all need to give back to society," said Charley Shimanski, CEO and president of the Colorado Association of Nonprofits.

But he pointed out that the celebrity-charity phenomenon isn't new. Stars like Sally Struthers, Oprah Winfrey and Mia Farrow have been at it for decades, and while they've certainly set a great example, they haven't triggered any landslides in giving.

Americans gave an estimated $260 billion to charity last year, Shimanski said, and $200 billion of that came from individual, non-celebrity donors.

In other words, "The percentage of the population whose charitable contributions are motivated by actresses is pretty small," he said. "(Celebrities) won't draw charitable donors from the sidelines."

Shimanski's assessment reminded me of something Mom used to say: Nothing is instant. Success happens one brick at a time.

So maybe we look to the young Jennys and Justins of the world to tackle suffering and crushing poverty one goat at a time.