LOS ANGELES, June 30 (Reuters) - Before my husband and I got married, we spent an entire afternoon -- on the Fourth of July, no less -- inside a local department store registering for wedding presents and bickering over china patterns and crystal stemware.

Why, questioned my less-than enthused husband-to-be, do we have to register at all? And if we do, why can't it be for something I really want?

Today, he could.

Depending on which online wedding planning Web site you visit, it's possible to register for a whitewater rafting trip, opera tickets and dance lessons, along with the usual household items.

Got wealthy relatives? Point them to The Knot (www.theknot.com), where they can pop for a 2000 BMW Z3 roadster, or help make a down payment on a house through Quicken Mortgage (www.quickenmortgage.com).

Gimmicks aside, wedding Web sites such as The Knot, WeddingChannel.com (www.weddingchannel.com), WeddingNetwork.com (www.weddingnetwork.com) and the newly launched WeddingChannel.com (www.dellajames.com) are aiming to turn themselves into gift buying powerhouses.

Leading wedding Web sites provide engaged couples with all sorts of planning and budgeting tools to organize their upcoming nuptials. Two have teamed up with national bridal magazines to provide articles and tips: WeddingChannel.com with Bride's (www.brides.com) and WeddingNetwork.com with Modern Bride (www.modernbride.com). The Knot has published its own wedding planning book, ``The Knot's Complete Guide to Weddings in the Real World,'' and has a print magazine and TV series in the works.

However, the companies are pouring the most energy and resources into their gift registries.

It shouldn't come as a surprise. Weddings are big business. Each year in the United States, 2.5 million couples become engaged and wedding registries generate $17 billion in revenue, according to Forrester Research (www.forrester.com), the Cambridge, Mass., online researcher.

But traditional off-line wedding registries don't always work. Couples who work through department stores can't sign up for the camping equipment or garden tools they want. Guests must rely on in-store registries that aren't always kept up to date.

Wedding sites claim to have found a better way, each with a slightly different twist. WeddingChannel.com and WeddingNetwork.com work directly with retailers, so wedding guests can select items online at the Web sites or in a store and the retailer handles the shipping -- and returns.

WeddingChannel.com, named after the main characters in the O. Henry short story ``The Gift of the Magi,'' purposely left the word ``wedding'' out of its name to allow for expanding into other gift areas, said Rebecca Patton, who left a vice president's job at E*Trade (www.etrade.com) to become the San Francisco-based company's chief executive. The site, which went live in early June, is in the process of putting online gift items from about two dozen merchants online, including Neiman Marcus, Crate & Barrel, Williams-Sonoma, REI, Gump's, Dillard's and various regional gift shops.

WeddingNetwork.com works with about 50 retailers, including Bed, Bath and Beyond, Smith & Hawkin and cataloger Ross Simon. Denver-based WeddingNetwork.com acquired a provider of alternative wedding gifts and services -- such as rafting and opera tickets -- late last year and has rolled out localized services in four cities, including San Francisco and Seattle, with plans to enter at least 10 more cities by year's end, according to company Chief Executive Steve Cunningham.

Earlier this year, WeddingChannel.com struck a deal with Federated, the department store conglomerate that runs eight chains, including Macy's and Bloomingdales, to link those stores' registries to the Web site. Federated, which made an undisclosed investment in the Los Angeles business, will handle fulfillment and delivery services through its recently acquired Fingerhut direct marketing division.

Likewise, The Knot has teamed up with home-shopping network QVC, which in April made a $15 million investment in the site and will take over gift order processing and delivery.

In all cases, wedding sites earn a sales commission on the merchandise they sell.

The biggest obstacle online wedding registries face isn't competition from electronic rivals, but changing the shopping habits of marrieds-to-be and their wedding guests.

Maureen Callahan is a case in point. Though she works in the Internet industry, running public relations for an online resume posting company in Indiana, Callahan and her fiance Marc registered the old-fashioned way for their July 2 wedding, which they pulled together in just three weeks.

``We hadn't planned to register, however, several guests requested it, so I zoomed to the local department store and used the electronic scanning system they have, then the bridal registry representative uploaded it to their computer and I was done,'' Callahan said. ``If I had more time, I'm nearly certain I would have handled (registering) online as well because many guests are either out of town or very Internet-savvy.''

Since its August 1997 launch, WeddingNetwork.com has had about 30,000 engaged couples register online, and another 100,000 refer guests to the service through its retailer partners. Roughly the same number of couples -- 30,000 -- have signed up for WeddingChannel.com's gift registry since it launched a year ago, and twice that number have created personal wedding pages, said Tim Gray, the company's co-founder and president.

``With registries, you're not just asking one person (to change), but telling everyone who's important to them to do it too, and that takes time,'' Gray said. ``Competition in the space is great because it helps educate people.''

(Michelle V. Rafter writes about cyberspace and technology from Los Angeles. Reach her at mvrafter@deltanet.com. Opinions expressed in this column are her own.)