10 Days to upgrade a website?

I went to check our Belk.com wedding registry today and found that the entire site is unavailable from 8/31 to 9/10. No one can look at anything on their site while they upgrade. This is insane. Their site wasn't very good to start with so I guess they think that no one would miss it anyway, but a website upgrade (even a complete overhaul) should only cause a few hours of service interruption. All you have to do is setup the new site at a private address, do all of your testing and migration there and then switch it over when you get finished. Obviously Belk is not extremely tech savvy, but you would think they could at least hire a web firm that has a clue.

Sorry that I'm a little aggravated about this.