By Jan Paschal

NEW YORK (Reuters) - April showers may bring May flowers, but for many of us, they bring something else: a trickle, or perhaps a flood, of invitations to bridal and baby showers or graduation ceremonies.

That's where the Web's partial gift registries come in.

Partial gift registries let family and friends earmark a cash gift for a bride and groom, or a new grad, for a big-ticket item -- like a honeymoon fund, which is among the choices at Felicite.com -- or a student loan payment, at GradFree.com.

"People are searching for ways to give a more meaningful gift," said Hans Xu, vice president of marketing at Felicite.com, a London-based Internet gift registry company with business offices in Greenwich, Connecticut.

"I'd rather give $100 toward a treadmill than buy china. What can you get? Two place settings? Maybe. But that money could go a long way toward something the couple really wants -- like a honeymoon, furniture or a big-screen TV. We've even done kayaks," Xu told Reuters.

The trends of more active lifestyles and people waiting until they're older to marry, Xu said, are driving the demand for more costly or non-traditional wedding gifts, which often show up on partial gift registries at Felicite.com (http://www.felicite.com). Some of the site's first brides are coming back to set up baby registries.

At GradFree.com, the generosity of parents, aunts and uncles and others goes toward the grad's student loan account.

"It's overwhelming when you get out of college and you have all this financial responsibility -- rent, maybe a car payment and student loans," said Adam Lloyd, founder and chief executive of GradFree.com (http://www.gradfree.com), of Bethesda, Maryland. "If you get a couple of $300 gifts for student loan payments, that gives you breathing room."

Bank of America BAC.N handles the credit-card transactions of people who give cash to graduates registered with GradFree.com, Lloyd said. Within hours, the gift is sent to the grad's student loan account, to go for the next payment. The site's processing fee varies -- for example, a $30 gift costs $38; a $100 gift costs $117.50.

Despite their convenience, online gift registries have not yet widely caught on. Jupiter Media Metrix, a leading Internet research firm, said in a July 2001 report that only 8 percent of online buyers made a purchase from online registries. It does not track partial gift registries.

FROM WALL STREET TO WEDDINGS

Xu, who was an analyst for UBS Warburg UBSZn.VX before becoming a co-founder of Felicite.com in early 1999, said "the model for this comes from Wall Street. When you're raising money for a company, you do it through syndication."

Felicite.com, privately held, has applied for a U.S. patent for the partial gift registry process. Once the patent has been approved, Xu plans "to talk to Amazon.com AMZN.O or Tiffany.com. They have many items that cost $100 or more, which we think would be good for a partial gift registry."

Felicite.com's Xu said partial contributions are used for about 56 percent of gifts costing more than $200. The handling fee for partial cash gifts is 4.9 percent of the amount given.

Dave Miller, who shopped for a wedding gift online, described Felicite.com's payment process as easier to use than most on the Web.

Adam Ruben, 31, and Sarah DiJulio, of Washington, D.C., who married last October, wanted to take a long honeymoon in Italy. Family and friends chipped in toward their honeymoon fund through their registry on Felicite.com, Ruben said.

The partial gift registry revives the old-fashioned concept of family and friends joining hands to help newlyweds start out in life -- a practice common in 19th-century America.

"There was this tremendous sense of community, of people coming together to help us realize this dream," Ruben said.

Stephen Ostrowski, 36, a PayPal quality assurance engineer and analyst, and his bride, Tammy Sehorn, of Chico, California, received gifts toward their Hawaii honeymoon and a chair through Felicite.com for their February 2002 wedding.

"This was a nice way for us to tell people what we needed without saying, 'Give me money,"' Ostrowski said.

A custom-built sofa topped the "wish list" for Kate Mayfield and James Tupper, who married Sept. 1, 2001. Felicite.com's partial gift registry gave wedding guests the chance to contribute to "something unique," she said.

HELP A GRAD PAY OFF LOANS

For new grads, life's soundtrack isn't as grand as the theme from "Born Free", the 1966 film in which the music swells as a lion, raised by humans, is set loose in the wild. Instead, it's often a downbeat tune as grads struggle to make ends meet -- and pay off student loans.

Lloyd got the idea for GradFree when two friends skipped a bachelor party because of school debt: "It hit me: Why not something like a wedding registry to pay off student loans?"

Launching GradFree.com last year wasn't a novelty for Lloyd, 32, who also owns GimpontheGo.com, an online travel business for people with disabilities. (He uses a wheelchair.)

Of the Class of 2002, about 1,600 have registered so far this spring with GradFree.com. Most are finishing undergraduate work. The site also attracts graduate, law and medical students who "often wind up with $80,000 or $90,000 of loan debt."

(The Livewire column runs weekly. Questions or comments on this column can be sent to jan.paschal(at)reuters.com.)