I’m going to be going into the kitchen right after I post this to box up my wedding china so I can give it away.
First, I don’t know what we were thinking because damn, it’s ugly.
And second, we hardly ever used it. Maybe five times. Total. In 11 years of marriage.
Do you use your wedding china? Do you have any? If you don’t have any, do you wish you did? If you do have some, do you wish you had more?
On Thanksgiving, you will use your wedding china, as well as any other big eating holiday that you observe. Otherwise, the stuff stays in the china closet most of the time.
We didn’t have a wedding, let alone china. I am pretty uncomfortable getting gifts: that was a large motivation for eloping. I’ve never missed it. But I am really, really bad about not upgrading household stuff: I use towels that are over 30 years old that I took from my parents’ house when I moved out. Most of our plates were my husband’s mothers, and they weren’t nice then. We don’t really entertain much, and even when we do, our family is pretty low key: my mom may have an inherited set of china somewhere, but when we have Thanksgiving dinner we eat off mismatched Cornell ware, much of which dates back to my childhood.
I totally get and understand that people like nice things. If I made a lot of money, I would have nice things. But it would have to be a lot more money.
Sure, I use it at nicer meals, even if it’s just my husband and I. We love the china we picked out, and why leave something nice locked up in a cabinet to collect dust?
No china, and no I don’t regret it. I don’t have space to entertain, nor to store things I don’t use. I have plates I like, it’s all good.
My mom has 3 sets of perfectly good china, none of which is wedding china (grandma (ugly), great grandma (pretty), great-aunt (inoffensive)) as well as several sets of silver. When the time comes that I want to host thanksgiving (which sure ain’t happening any time soon) I’m sure she will be delighted to pass all that on.
I sold my parents’ china at an estate sale. It’s all too delicate, floral and foo-foo for my tastes, and I just can’t see myself having some dinner party where it would be used. (My everyday china is Fiestaware.) I kept their wedding silverware; South Seas Community, which is rather contemporary for a 55 year old pattern.
No china, no regrets. I prefer cheaper, trendy plates and stuff that I won’t mourn if they break. We entertain a ton, but no one cares if everyone’s plates match, if we exceed our matching place settings.
Didn’t register for wedding china and it was the best decision we ever made. No lugging a box of china and silverware to home after home, using it once a year, like my parents did (and still do).
The Queen of England has never visited and if she does, she can eat off Fiestaware like the rest of us.
Oh yeah, I forgot about this part - we bought some plain white cheap china-type plates at Target for entertaining more people than our eight place settings of china will serve, and don’t care that they don’t match up with the other stuff. I won’t mourn the loss of a piece of china, either - it’s there to be used and be pretty.
Our everyday dishware these days is a cute set from Ikea. It’s our fourth set in our dozen-ish year marriage; if pieces warp because they soak in the sink too long or whatever, no loss.
It’s going on 9 years since I got married and… nope. Not once.
We’ve accumulated several patterns and we use them fairly regularly. Some are more formal than others, some we like more than others, and some are more durable than others. It’s fun to have choices, especially for my wife.
We got china, and I like it a lot - it’s a relatively non-foofy, classic pattern that could go with a lot of different things. We’ve used it a couple of times so far, but then we’ve only been married a bit over a year, and didn’t have anywhere to unpack the stuff until a few months ago. But it’s displayed in a china cabinet, so we get to look at it all the time. It’s purty. But then as the granddaughter of antique dealers, I have a thing for nice housewares and really appreciate that kind of stuff.
I got wedding china on the occasion of my second marriage. I love it. It’s not a real frou-frou pattern (Noritake Royal Hunt) and it’s great for formal or holiday meals. I like to use it whenever I can.
We had gotten a right smart of it - enough that when we divorced, we divided it and each had enough for almost six place settings.
I would like to get a little more, so as to have 8 place settings and a couple extras in case of breakage.
No china. Our plates are Corelle from Overstock.com. We got it when we moved–in part to replace the mismatched stuff that we’d been using since we moved in together, and in part because it was actually cheaper to buy new dishes than it would be to pay the movers to pack ours–I figured we’d be lucky if we still had our dishes intact if I packed them. The Corelle plates are great and cheap enough that if they break, I won’t be heartbroken over it. When we throw parties, we just get those nice colored plastic disposable plates. Nobody cares.
No wedding china, but I did want a china set. Bought a virtually complete 12 setting with all the serving pieces on eBay for $100. Two bread plates broke in shipping, so the shipping insurance covered it. Got the $100 refunded!
I use it at least three times a year.
I haven’t gotten married yet, but I did buy someone else’s wedding china at a yard sale for less than $30. I use it all the time, even if its just me.
Ha! That sounds like my sister and her husband. They have something like seven sets between them and that’s not even counting my mom’s.
Ugh. My mother-in-law has often tried to foist family heirlooms on us, including several sets of china. No thanks. We have cheap plain white plates bought individually at BB&B, and so are easy to replace when we have breakages. We have a small house and a small table, and when we entertain, it’s small numbers of our friends, who are as unimpressed by heirloom china as we are.
At first I told her (quite honestly) that we didn’t have enough cabinet space to store fancy china.
Then, when we renovated the kitchen and I told her we STILL didn’t have room, she implied that I had failed at kitchen design, since I obviously hadn’t included enough storage space in the new design.
sigh
We got neither china nor silver; we did get decent flatware and dishes (Oneida and Mikasa) that we use every day. So far, (3 years in), the dishes are doing great, and we’re only down one small fork that I accidentally mangled in the garbage disposal.
We figured that we’ll eventually end up with one of the 4 sets of china that our parents possess- our mothers ended up with their own china and that of their mothers.
