Registries

Oct 2008

Registry Ennui

I have a confession to make. Early this year, when we were not engaged, but boy was I ready to be, I used to wander through the high end cooking store near my office and play the registering game. "Hum," I'd think to myself, "this sure is a nice fancy cheese board. I bet married people have cheese boards like this." Of course, what would follow was me looking at the price of said cheese board and thinking "AH! It's not that nice a cheese board!"

Fast forward to now. We've been engaged long enough that registering is something looming on the horizon. Oddly, I'm much less excited about it than you might expect. I really love shopping for presents for other peoples weddings off registries, mind you. Who doesn't? You get to play house, and get a inside look at peoples tastes. "Cool wine glasses," you think. Or "Ohdeargod, who asks for reindeer Christmas china?" And then you get the delight and satisfaction of foisting shiny wrapped things on newlyweds. But I can't seem to muster any of that excitement for our registry. Here are the issues:

I'm almost thirty. I've lived in apartments of one form or another for the last 10 years, so chances are if I can't live without it, I've probably already bought it. We truly needed a registry a year and a half ago when we moved to San Francisco, and seemed to need a million things for our new apartment. But now? We've got those things.
I don't cook. Period. David does cook, and he's very serious about it, so he has some things he's really excited to register for, like pans that will last a lifetime and serious knives. I'm excited that he's excited, but that's the extent of my emotions.
We have a small apartment, and it's tidy. The rules are, if we don't have a place to keep it, it doesn't come in the door, and most spots are already taken. We have no plans to move to a bigger space soon. Our apartment is 1930's immaculate rent controlled perfection, so our thoughts are more of the "do we have a walk in closet big enough to convert to a nursery?" variety.
I'm not a shopper, so the idea of taking hours and hours to set up a online registry filled with flawless etsy finds makes me feel bored.

Continue reading Registry Ennui

Posted in: Life, Meg's Thoughts, Planning, Registries, Weddings | 54 Comments »

Oct 2008

Registry Idea: The Goat Project

When I sent a email out to request wedding graduate guest posts, Aimee and Minh wrote me a post about one of the coolest wedding ideas I have ever heard in my life. Period. As I mentioned yesterday, I’ve always felt a little strange about having a charity registry, since it feels a little like asking for cash, when I know people want to give us something tangible to help build our home. Enter Aimee and Minh with the tangible charity gift that you can mix in amongst the china. We are planning to participate in this project too. It won’t help build our physical home, but it will help to build someone else’s home, as well as the strong bedrock of values that we bring into our marriage. And, we’ll still get those shiny pots and pans. Take it away, you two….
Registries. Awkward, aren’t they? At no other time in your adult life do you openly ask for gifts, let alone post a comprehensive list on the internet asking for lots of gifts. But as anyone who has been involved in a wedding (as a guest or host) knows, registries are very practical. Luckily for us, one of our registry choices added an unexpected richness and depth to the wedding experience, so when Meg asked us to write a little something for A Practical Wedding, we knew it would have to be about The Goat Project. Continue reading Registry Idea: The Goat Project

Posted in: Registries | 20 Comments »

Dec 2008

How I Tamed The Registry

As regular readers know, I’ve been struggling with registry ennui. A registry was right for us (it isn’t for everyone!) since it was going to let our family members help us celebrate in a way that made them happy, but I just couldn’t get my arms around it. Getting new and fancy stuff didn’t feel quite right to me.

Then last week, I decided to take a trip to the store we are registered at on my own. I started wandering around, picking things up, thinking about them. And then, of course, I started getting chatty with the salespeople, because that’s just how I roll. Suddenly questions were piling out of my mouth – questions I never expected to ask.

“How sturdy are these plates? Because you know kids, they drop things.”
“I like this toaster, it seems solidly built. Will it last? Does it come in a four slice model, so the whole family isn’t waiting on toast?”
“Tell me about these pots. Will we take them with us to the retirement home?”
“This table cloth – is it big enough for the extended family at the holidays?”

And then I got it. Continue reading How I Tamed The Registry

Posted in: Registries | 40 Comments »

Dec 2008

Registry: Telling People About It

As part of our ongoing discussion of registries (see: Part I, Part II, Part III), several of you have asked me to share what language we ended up using when talking about our registry. And I figured - why not? First, let me say, that since my sense of etiquette is firmly set in 1933, I would have been more comfortable not ever mentioning to anyone ever that we were registered anywhere, so as to not look like we were asking for gifts. But, if I've learned anything about wedding planning, it's that you should pick your battles, and the irony of the argument that it was more, achem, Practical to let guests know where we were registered was not lost on me.

So, here is what we said about gifts on our wedding website. It won't be right for all of you, but if it helps just one of you, than I've done my job:
Continue reading Registry: Telling People About It

Posted in: Registries | 36 Comments »

May 2011

Building (and Pondering) A Wedding Registry

Today, as part of our APW and The Kitchn collaboration, we have a fantastic post on thinking about and building a wedding registry. This morning we shared the wedding of Faith Durand, managing editor of The Kitchn, from the APW archives. This afternoon she’s here to share her thoughts on wedding registries. Sometimes I think Faith lives inside my head, because we think over problems in such similar ways (you can read my thoughts on the wedding registry back here). So I’m delighted to bring this thoughtful and super useful post to all of you in the midst of the registry dilemma.

Hello there, Team Practical! Before I dive in, first let me just say that Meg and all of you made up the most encouraging, sane, and inspiring community I found while planning my own wedding three years ago. I was so grateful for this site and this community. So I’m delighted to have a chance to chat about registries in general and practical kitchen resources in particular.

It seems that most brides and bridegrooms I meet these days are vaguely embarrassed by the idea of a wedding registry. I know I was. I was nearly 30 when I got married, and as a professional food writer I already had nearly everything I needed to stock a well-functioning kitchen. Was a registry tacky? Greedy? Too focused on material things during what ought to be a spiritual, deeply personal life moment? My fiancé and I toyed with the idea of jettisoning the registry completely, or asking for money to be given to charity in our names.

I’m glad that we grappled with this question, and that we worked together to make a thoughtful choice. But in the end, we got over our fear of looking like we were greedy or grasping. Because of course we were not, and the reality was that most of our friends and relatives were going to give us a wedding present. We came to the conclusion that grateful acceptance of this generosity was the most gracious option. (Just turn it around for a moment and look at it from the other side; I love giving wedding presents. It’s delightful to give a gift to people I love on such a wonderful day.)

All of our wedding guests were perfectly capable of deciding whether or not they wanted to give us a gift. Some guests who traveled a long way to be there simply gave us the gift of their presence. Other guests gave cash, and friends who didn’t want to give something off the registry gave us other gifts we treasure. One gave us a funny deck of cards; another played a song at the wedding. And those guests who were inclined to help us set up our home had a resource to do so.

This of course is not the only option or the best option for everyone. But our own personal way of making peace with the whole idea was to ask for a small list of things we believed would be long-lasting, beautiful, and helpful in offering hospitality to others in our home.

Meg asked me to offer some practical resources on this process — if you’ve come to the same place as we did in our wedding registry decision, and you want to set up your kitchen to be more functional, more hospitable, and better suited to the pleasures of cooking at home, then these questions may be useful.

A Few Practical Questions for Building a Kitchen Registry

1. What’s broken or worn out in my kitchen? If you’re getting married right out of school and you have no kitchen equipment to speak of, this probably doesn’t apply. But if you’re like me and you have a fairly well-equipped kitchen already, look over your tools. Are your tongs rusted and falling apart? Is your only stockpot thin and flimsy? Does any lack of equipment trip you up when cooking a basic meal? Look for the sore spots of your kitchen; this would be a good time to replace them. (For instance, my wineglasses were a mess — mismatched and chipped. I’m forever grateful to my aunt and my grandmother for upgrading this very important element of my home!)

2. Is there one special tool or piece I’ve been dreaming of? Don’t put a KitchenAid mixer on your registry just because you think you ought to. Continue reading Building (and Pondering) A Wedding Registry

Posted in: How To, Registries | 61 Comments »

Nov 2011

Confessions of a Bridal Registry Consultant

The other week, we were discussing the APW theme that you don’t, in fact, have to Buy All The Things for your wedding (because you already have all the things that matter). Emily, who you’ll remember from her lovely New Orleans elopement and her post on the immigration process and marriage, piped up to say, “As a former bridal registry consultant, I would love to write a post about how the WIC wants you to buy all the things. Or at least register for all the things.” So of course I begged her to write exactly that post. So here, in our ongoing discussion about registries, is an exposé on how the industry wants you to buy it all (Hint #1: Maybe register online? Hint #2: The registry isn’t exactly for you, so it’s still probably worth doing, your own way). Let’s dive in:

Due to the joy of one-year leases and unexpected elopement, Ian and I spent our first year of marriage in the master suite of a three-bedroom apartment with my brother-in-law and one of my husband’s friends. Nesting wasn’t possible as we were essentially living inside the saying, “This is why we can’t have nice things.”

So imagine how much fun I thought it would be to work at Bed Bath & Beyond* as a bridal consultant. I’d get to help people build their new homes, help them pick out everything they could possibly ever need or want. For two months, between helping customers and climbing up and down ten-foot ladders, I took classes on housewares. From bakeware to window treatments, I learned it all. My whole life was thread counts, cast iron, and place settings and I loved it. The problem, however, came once I completed my training and became an official registry consultant.

The idea of a bridal consultant is different in practice than it is in theory. In theory I was there to help customers pick out what they wanted. In practice however, consultants are judged by their numbers, and there’s a lot of pressure to build “good” registries, although there’s no real reward for doing so. (Other than the happy feeling of helping someone make good choices. That doesn’t pay the rent though, unfortunately.)

So what makes a good registry? Well…

Our goal for the number of items on your registry is the number of your wedding guests times two. At least. In theory this is to make it easier for your guests to shop, but really the higher the number, the better of a job we’ve done. The total dollar amount of your registry is another number we’re judged on, so we’re always going to steer you towards higher quality items.
We want to register you for fine china. Twelve place settings. Formal and casual if possible, which makes twenty-four place settings. And flatware and glassware and napkins and napkin rings and placemats, also times twelve. (Or twenty-four if we’re lucky.)
A certain percentage of your registry should be from the fine china department for our numbers to be good. If you don’t want china, we will walk you around the room and offer you everything that sparkles until we hit that number. Toasting flutes, crystal vases, cake cutting sets, all wedding themed with hearts and pearls and bows. Some of those things will cost more than what I made in a month; you will probably use them once.
We need you to register for luggage. Even if you don’t want luggage, even if hardly anyone ever buys luggage off a registry, we can’t have a zero in that category. We sell you on luggage by asking you how much you travel. If you say you don’t travel much, we ask how much you plan to travel in the future, and it works every time, because who doesn’t want to go on vacation? Continue reading Confessions of a Bridal Registry Consultant

Posted in: Registries | 135 Comments »