Registry, Schmegistry

When I moved away for college, one of the things I missed the most was easy access to my mom's Kitchenaid mixer. The women on both sides of my family, for generations back, were fabulous bakers and I had grown up helping my mom make cookies and cakes in her stand mixer. So when my mom asked me what I wanted for Christmas that year I told her that truthfully, what I wanted most was my very own Kitchenaid.

"That's a wedding present," she told me. "I'll give you one of those when you get married."

Which was kind of a ridiculous answer. I mean, Kitchenaids are expensive, and I knew that, so it's not like I was feeling entitled to receive one for Christmas. But her idea that the appropriate time to acquire a Kitchenaid (and, apparently, any other well-made, high ticket kitchen item) was to wait until you got married and then to register for it... Well, let's just say that seemed somewhat odd. I wanted that mixer now, not at some nebulous date in the future. I wasn't even dating anyone at the time. Was I really not supposed to have anything that didn't come from Target or Goodwill in my kitchen until then? And let me tell you, my mom would have been pissed if I'd gotten married at 18 just so I could have someone else buy me a kitchen appliance. And I told her so, and she laughed. And she didn't buy me a Kitchenaid for Christmas. (My teasing must have made some difference. Eventually, years later, that was my parents' very thoughtful law school graduation gift to me even though I was very single at the time. And I have used it for innumerable awesomenesses since, my spinsterhood notwithstanding.)

Anyway, my lust for a Kitchenaid was my first real familiarity with the institution of wedding registries. I like puttering in the kitchen, so every time I would fall in love with a kitchen-related toy that I really couldn't justify spending the money on, I would think, "man, I can't wait until I get married, I am totally putting this on my registry." It was like the wish list I never had to save up for. I have about three hypothetical kitchens worth of All-Clad, Le Creuset, matchy-matchy snack plates, Vitamixes, cast iron teapots, all waiting to go on my hypothetical wedding registry. I would privately critique my friends' registries when I was out buying them wedding presents. I would stalk around kitchen stores, muttering to myself, "Clearly they haven't read Alton Brown. Don't they know ceramic is an slow heat conductor and this Le Cruest ceramic bakeware will only break their hearts?" I knew I wouldn't make any such rookie mistakes.

I am getting married in four months and I can't bring myself to register for any of it. Meg, over at A Practical Wedding, refers to it as Registry Ennui, which is not a bad descriptor at all, though sometimes I feel a little closer to "Registry Angst."

From what I see, a lot of people who are relectant to register think they have everything they need already. They're combining two households, so they already have everything they need, want, or have space for. That's not us.

It's not that I don't want any kitchenware. I am using most of the same pots and pans I got as an open item at a big box store when I was 20. The saucepan is so discolored it looks powdercoated, and several of the others weren't that hot to begin with. My cheap springform pan has rusted, so cheesecakes and flourless chocolate cakes are no longer in my repertoire. I have mixing bowls, but not the ones I want (stainless steel with a pourable spout--do people even make these anymore? Are people actually relying on double boilers for melting chocoloate?). Several useful but not strictly essential measuring spoons and cups have vanished. Shiner's blender, which replaced in my kitchen the blender my mom received off her wedding registry in the 70's, only works on things that are already pretty liquid. So while this is not a major quality of life issue--obviously, I can and do feed myself in spite of these daunting obstacles--these are things I'd like to have, that would make my life easier or cheerier in some way, and that are normally the type of thing one could expect to find on a wedding registry.

No, my issue is not that there aren't traditional registry items I could legitimately use and truly enjoy. It's that a bunch of our friends are broke, or at least are seriously budget. In fact, the ones who live farthest away, whose expenses would be the greatest if they were to travel to attend our wedding, are also for the most part our guests with the lowest incomes and the highest costs of living. I don't know if some of them will be able to make it to the wedding at all given the expense, which bums me out but which is totally understandable. After all, things are looking kind of scary these days. But I know that a lot of people, consciously or unconsciously, look to the registry list to tell them what they are expected to spend to "cover their plate" as a guest. Even when you're close friends with the people getting married. Maybe even especially if you're close friends with the people getting married. I don't want my friends, who I am already asking to put down a chunk of change to get themselves across the country to our wedding, to think they have to drop another $120 on a saucier to make me feel sufficiently loved as an individual. I want them to come. A lot. I don't care if they bring us anything. So I just don't want to start down that road.

Even if all our friends were wealthy, I don't know if I'd feel much different. Now that I am in the position of doing the asking rather than the buying, it seems kind of crass. I think this is mostly my personal issue. I know the pro-registry people have a very good point when they say that most people will buy you something because they want to. I know I always did. I must have escaped this phenomenon I've heard described of being invited to the wedding of people you barely know in order to pad their haul. And I also believe that most people enjoy shopping from the registry, secure in the knowledge that whatever they buy is something the recipients actually want. Unless I know someone extremely well, I prefer to shop with an eye to the registry for this very reason. But still I have been feeling awkward about asking people to buy me this specific thing from this specific place with the knowledge that it will cost this specific number of dollars.

The other thing nagging at me is that we are really fortunate in our job situations and our lives that we have the means to buy this stuff if we really want to. Not all at once, but over the course of a few months or a year we could buy it all if we decided to allocate our money in that way. And the fact that we haven't done so maybe means that it's not all that important to us.

Bascially, I want other people to register so that it is convenient for me, but I don't want to register myself because I don't want to be, or feel, greedy. It's kind of messed up. I don't have this issue when people ask me what I want for Christmas or my birthday. Probably because I'm not also asking people to spend a ton of money traveling to a city not of their choosing at a time not of their choosing before they can give it to me.

We are splitting the difference, not registering in a traditional way but putting together a list of items, ideas, and charities at the Center for the New American Dream's Alternative Gift Registry. And we're not putting very many things on there. There will be far fewer items than guests. The hope is that the few material items on there will spark people's imaginations if they want to shop for us, the charities can be donated to over and over again, and the non-purchasable things (for example, I'm trying to figure out how to word a request for a letter containing advice to a newly married couple) can be done by anyone, no matter what their budget.

There's a possibility that Shiner's mom will host a small party for us later in the spring or summer. Our wedding will be pretty small, so this will give her the opportunity to celebrate marrying off her oldest child with all her friends and coworkers. Those people won't know us at all, so the case for the traditional registry is somewhat stronger there. So we may not be out of the woods yet.

What do you think? Buyers of wedding presents? Receivers of wedding presents? Those who have been both? Did you feel weird about the registry, and how did you manage any weirdness that came up?