"Weddings are hectic. What about if, on top of that, the bride is co-founding a stealth-mode company in the [Silicon] Valley? My fiancé and I are launching a startup--and also getting married five days from now at Stanford [University]. So we created the first Startup Wedding Registry." 

So began an intriguing e-mail from Drue Kataoka, an accomplished Japanese sumi-e brush painting artist, co-writer of the blog ValleyZen, entrepreneur and soon-to-be bride.

"No crystal, flatware or blenders here. Instead, we've invited our guests to feed an engineer for a day ($273), feed a VC lunch ($291) or provide caffe lattes for a week ($129)," Kataoka continued. The website shows how the cost of each gift was calculated. Lunch for a venture capitalist, for example, is based on a five-course menu at a Menlo Park restaurant.

Kataoka won't say much about her startup, Aboomba, beyond calling it a "stealth company in the consumer internet space." She says it's a platform that will empower entrepreneurship. The couple--who married on Aug. 29--plan to launch the business early next year.

Kataoka acknowledges that the registry is a bit tongue-in-cheek, designed as much for entertainment as for wedding gifts. "People had asked us, where are you going to register?" The Palo Alto couple dutifully made the rounds of stores such as Macy's and even Tiffany's, and concluded it would be boring to drag guests through a traditional registry.

That's when Kataoka and her new husband, Svetlozar Kazanjiev, hit upon the idea of creating virtual items surrounding startup expenses. After all, their guest list was composed largely of venture capitalists, engineers, lawyers and entrepreneurs who could relate to the concept.

In essence, the couple "opened up our wedding to the world," Kataoka says. They built it so that visitors could add comments--and even suggest additional items a startup might need. And the world replied. The couple received gifts from several people they don't know. And Amazon.com stepped forward with a $300 credit for cloud hosting. "We did not contact them at all," Kataoka says.

Ironically, the viral campaign started with a formal wedding invitation, which included a link to the Startup Wedding Registry. "People started posting that address on their Facebook pages. People who were our guests moved to people who weren't our guests," Kataoka says. A story in The New York Times stirred the buzz even more. That article and others ended up being tweeted and retweeted on Twitter.com.

Other amusing, Silicon Valley-style wedding touches: a "Wiki cake" and a high-tech photo booth. Guests wrote messages on the plain white frosting of an undecorated sheet cake using pastry tubes filled with various kinds of colored frosting. Extra vanilla frosting was available, too, in case someone wanted to edit a previous comment.

The photo booth featured a high-resolution camera hooked up to a computer monitor and a remote control. Guests could rummage through a trunk full of fun items to wear, such as boas and hats, and take their own photos, which were uploaded to the web in real time.

Kataoka has enjoyed the attention the Startup Wedding Registry evoked, and welcomes the buzz surrounding Aboomba. The money, she says, "is not significant." She's done well with her artistry, and Kazanjiev has been involved in two startups that were acquired. They're prepared to put their savings into the company and are not seeking venture capital, she says.

"The most important thing to us was, we wanted to start a conversation. What does it take to start a Silicon Valley company nowadays?" Kataoka regrets that the site wasn't created in a wiki format to enable even more interaction and participation. "On the web, the creator is really the least important," she says. "The most important ingredient is participation of the community and the collective intelligence of the whole."