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What to get the couple who have everything? How about livestock?

When Jenny Elliott, 24, and Justin Alexander, 27, tie the knot next week, the two Christian peacemakers, who are based in Amman, have asked their wedding guests to chip in for sheep and goats for needy Arab families.

"Justin and I don't feel the need to develop an extensive dining collection," explains Elliott, who believes that "having a lot of things just weighs you down."

She adds: "We want our wedding to reflect our values and set the tone for our lives, so this made sense."

As it happens, Jenny and Justin may be trendsetters, yet they are also an altruistic exception. Most couples, finding themselves with little need for the traditional essentials of setting up house, are finding novel ways to romance what they see essentially as an opportunity.

When Mark Binns, 31, and Katie Milliken, 29, got married last August, they decided to register for a honeymoon trip to Costa Rica. "When we moved in together, we had both been out on our own so we actually ended up with two sets of everything," Binns says. "So our wedding guests gave us an ATV tour up the side of a volcano, which was way cooler than a toaster."

And then there's Danny Pustil and Jamie Berg, who chose another route for their wedding. "We had lived together before getting married, so we already had everything we needed," the 35-year-old Pustil said. "The last thing I wanted was 40 salad forks sitting there in a box in the basement." So they closed their registry at Ashley's and opened one at a Toronto art gallery instead.

If I was in the fine china business, I'd be running scared. Just as weddings have morphed into a creative expression of a couple's personal style, the gift registry is getting a makeover. And increasingly it's one geared to a new sophisticated generation of newlyweds, who, with their preference for casual entertaining and urban condos, see a second set of "good" dinnerware as stuff they can't store and don't need. The upshot of this is that more businesses not normally associated with a bridal registry are getting in on the game.

"Young couples today are very conscious of lifestyle, so they are saying, sure, dishes are nice, but they are not as important as dressing up your home," says Roy Banse of Toronto's contemporary furniture store, Fluid Living, which has just initiated an on-line wedding registry. Brides and grooms can now ask their guests to ditch the casseroles, and chip in for designer lamps and modernist sofas.

At Toronto's upscale Au Lit, couples can now register for elegant bedding. Canadian Tire's new on-line registry can hook them up with MP3 players and telescopes. At Vespa Toronto, brides and grooms who envision themselves hitting the road in head scarves à la La Dolce Vita can ask their guests to chip in for a cool vintage Vespa. And at Art Interiors, the wedding registry is emerging as a significant part of the business.

"Our [bridal] sales are insane," says Lisa Diamond of Art Interiors. "The thing is that wedding gifts are a big cash grab, and everybody today wants to be smart about it. When you allocate your gifts to art, what you're doing is upgrading from your college Monet posters and at the same time making an investment in something that you get to enjoy every day."

And then there are the new options for those who would rather be treated to "experiences." At Europe Bound's five locations across the country, where couples can register for outdoor equipment and camping gear, owner Joe Raftis's catchy motto is "backpacks instead of blenders, carabiners instead of crock pots and tents instead of toasters."

But by far the strongest category in alternative registry is travel. In the past three years, more than 20,000 couples from 126 countries (and all 10 Canadian provinces) have registered for everything from airfare to romantic dinners and pampering spa treatments on http://www.thebigday.com, making it the pre-eminent site for a honeymoon registry.

The bridal couple can plan each and every wonderful moment of their honeymoon, and itemize it on-line in a sort of shopping list, complete with rapturous descriptions of the Château d'Yquem they will be sipping at dinner and lush stock photos of the incredible view from their luxurious hotel room, along with the price, so that their guests can discreetly click and it's paid for.

At this point, I must ask, if financing is what everybody really, really wants, then whatever happened to the simple, time-tested practice of just giving money? In the opinion of the site's founder, Michael Cottam, the cold, hard cash gift risks being crass. "There's something sort of impersonal about it. And then with money, it's all about the amount of the cheque."

When Cottam himself got hitched in October, friends bought him things he had listed on the site such as umbrella drinks at a beach bar in the Seychelles. "It was probably only $20, but the thing about this kind of registry is that wasn't the point," he says. "It was cool, and romantic and fun."

Which, in essence, appear to be the rules for the hip new wedding registry, which essentially aims to make the most of a big windfall, without looking like it -- unless, that is, it gets spent on a flock of sheep.

kvonhahn@globeandmail.com

Honeymoon hogs

The five tackiest honeymoon registry requests on www.thebigday.com:

Swimsuits for a trip to Hawaii ($100)

Shoe shopping in Italy ($100)

Starbucks lattes on a bike tour of Australia ($25)

Cab fare in Athens ($25)

Tips and gratuities ($65)