The Registry

I've been assembling our registry. Bit by by bit, I've dragged pizza stones and pillow cases back to our little registry cave where I crouch atop a hoard of home furnishings to count my silverware, cackling like a loon.*

We're using Zola, which lets us add items from any site in the whole, wide Internet. It's a little overwhelming and probably gives us a bit too much freedom. Why worry about hand towels when we can register for enough plastic balls to make our future home into a giant ball pit? WHO NEEDS PLATES, MAN? WE'RE GETTING A GENUINE LIFE-SIZE REPLICA OF A TRICERATOPS TO USE AS A COUCH AND A BED AND PROBABLY ALL OUR OTHER FURNITURE TOO BECAUSE TRICERATOPS WERE HUGE.

But then there's all the finery, the dainty fripperies that make me feel like a demure, young doe just by looking at them. What a sacred moment in a woman's life, carefully selecting all the items with which to keep her future home, amirite? Won't I feel better about myself if I can wipe my mouth on a linen napkin? Won't I have more friends if I can offer them a cold beverage out of a crystal pitcher? Don't I deserve a stand mixer and 12 sets of fine china just because I'm getting married?

No.

We do not need marble egg cups. We do not need cunning little latte bowls all the colors of the ocean. In fact, we do not need anything that can be described as "cunning." We definitely don't need a rustic, porcelain salt cellar from France with lilies of the valley etched so charmingly on the side. And I don't think my weird pining for kitchen goods should be encouraged.

Since I know you wanted to find out some boring facts about registries, I'll indulge you:

Wedding gifts are the new dowry. It used to be that the bride's family negotiated the terms of the dowry at the time of the engagement, and the bride would add her own clothes, linens, doilies, and some other stuff from her hope chest. She'd either have made or been given these things by her family, and the couple would use them in their home along with the goats and the sack of gold provided by the father of the bride. After a while, bridal showers provided an opportunity for womenfolk to contribute little gifts. Then in 1924, the department store Marshall Field's came up with the idea for registries as we know them today: an antiquated piece of etiquette that couples mention before awkwardly admitting, "But we'd really prefer cash, if it's all the same to you?"

I'm being harsh. I love tradition - and wedding traditions in particular, because they're so transient. If all goes well, I'll only be at the center of them once. Not everyone gets to experience being a bride. I feel like a third grader visiting Colonial Williamsburg: I get to put on a quaint costume for a year** and experience a different way of life - not one of churning butter, maybe (we'll see), but of pale pink roses and strings of pearls and superstitious rhymes about spiders in your dress and stuff. But under that, I'm still myself, so it's also one of tacos and shenanigans and NO SPIDERS ANYWHERE NEAR ME I DON'T CARE HOW LUCKY IT IS.

Planning this wedding has been a battle between my love of wedding traditions and my desire to be a good feminist and human being. A good person would probably forego anything materialistic and ask that guests donate to charity, instead. Which is fine, but if we register at Williams-Sonoma, we get to use one of those scanner guns. We'll probably pick out a teak cutting board and some oyster forks while we're there, because we don't know that the queen will never come to visit. I even referred to a book published in 1970 called Happy Living for New Homemakers while picking out table settings. I ain't even ashamed.

But neither Bill nor I cares about actually getting the things. The gifts themselves don't matter; it's the sentiment of a community supporting a couple and helping them build a life together. It's fun to do some of the bride stuff, but traditions don't have any intrinsic meaning. After the wedding, we're still going to be us, just with nicer stuff, maybe.

I think.

I dunno, I've never gotten married before.

Personally, I like the old Scottish tradition of couples going around to all their neighbors' houses and picking one possession from each to furnish their new home. If we still did that, I'd just take any old paintings I could find of severe-looking, dead relatives, and then pocket some jewelry from all the other places.

Treat. Yo. Self.

Then we'd haul our loot back to our little cave and live quite comfortably indeed, just like it says in Happy Living for New Homemakers.



* In other news, I quit my office job to do transcription from home. Things get a little weird when I'm not required to put on pants in the morning.
** Then I take that off and put on my wife costume, which I wear UNTIL ONE OF US DIES. Then I either put on my corpse outfit, or it's WIDOW'S WEEDS 4LYFE!!


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