I sincerely hope you capitalized on that moment. 
but when you knew Max and the wife and kid couldn’t make it then you should have put the dishes away. now they will be haunted by suspicions of not feeling as special as the others for the maiden voyage.
I grew up in a house with china so precious it was rarely used and when it was, the experience was not enjoyable because we had to be so careful.
I decided to never own dishes I couldn’t afford to use and break. It worked for me. I still set an attractive table, could change colors when I wanted, could use the storage space for more fun things than unused dinnerware, and didn’t sweat a loss or breakage.
No dish tyranny is a simpler way to live.
Why didn’t I think of that?
It seems to be a negative stereotype that old Italian do that for some reason.
I have a full set of Lenox china, most of which was wedding presents - we chose china and crystal for our wedding registry, never expecting to get any but it was fun to see that we liked the same ones. His parents’ friends gave us several place settings and a few serving pieces, and over the years I’ve competed the set on eBay.
I’ve used it a few times, for Thanksgiving dinners when his parents were still alive. I may use it again, someday.
When we cleaned out my inlaw’s house, we found many partial sets of china. Some was sold at the estate sale, some was donated, and I kept a set of, I guess I’d call them tea party plates - pretty teacups with matching sandwich/snack plates with an indent for the teacup, sort of a combination saucer/lunch plate.
I also ended up with MIL’s china cabinet, which is too large for my kitchen, so it’s in our guest/spare/cat’s room holding collectibles and the aforementioned tea party plates.
Our parents have the good china in a china cabinet, along with the good crystal, and we use it on special occassions.
When I first moved out and had to deal with furnishing my own place, I went to this estate sale on craigslist and which was a sad little affair but there was a service for 20 that had clearly never been used before and I got it for $30 I think. I’ve been using that set ever since as my only set of plates and bowls. In the last ~10 years, I’ve broken about half of it but life’s too short to worry about china. It’s certainly been nice eating everything off real bone china plates.
I don’t really have good China, but about twenty years ago when my daughter was little, I figured she deserved to eat using the good silverware, so it became our everyday silverware. And amazingly, because it’s used all the time, it doesn’t tarnish nearly as often as I thought it would. It doesn’t go in the dishwasher, but it’s not difficult to fill the basin with hot soapy water and wash the few utensils we use.
I don’t use the Waterford every day, though. I guess I could, but I go through too many glasses each day, and I don’t want to hand wash that many.
A fanfare of strumpets.
Or an anthology of pros.
I got given a set of china as a wedding present. I’ve been divorced 20 years and the stuff is still in the box in the spare room, never opened or taken out. If it hadn’t been a gift from my Grandfather I would have pitched it ages ago.
No chance of ever using it, I don’t have a dining table.
I inherited my grandmother’s German china. How they could afford that as Arkansas sharecroppers that then became Washington homesteaders is beyond me. I barely remember the China from when I was a child, and my father wanted to pass it down, and my wife and I had just built a big house. Now it sits in a cabinet. Not sure when we will use it between the bambinas and the fact it needs to be hand washed. But I have it.
Dare I speculate on what your younger brother, Bed Linens Guy got?
Our “good” china, I got from Home Shopping Network or some such, almost a decade ago. It was inexpensive but really pretty, at least by my tastes (kind of a ripoff of this). I use it on special occasions or when the meal seems to require it. I.E., the really wide soup plates are always brought out if I make gumbo or fricassee, because I don’t have any “everyday” china that suits. If I have a nice Frenchy sauce to pour, I use the “gravy boat,” and if I make a fancy soup, out comes the tureen. And then I’ll just go ahead and use the matching dishes.
OTOH, quite often, we use paper plates. I’m just weird like that. We also have plain white Corelle for “everyday,” but we’ll use paper plates if dinner is very simple, because everyone here hates washing dishes.
P.S. I just bought a ton of mid-century “Indiana” amber glass jars that sort of go with the china, to put rice and flour and such in.
I didn’t register for china when I got married. I knew I had no where to store anything I might have received, and we wouldn’t use it anyway. My mother bought me a set of Corelle, I and figured we were good to go.
Fast forward half a dozen years, and Mr. May bought me good furniture for Christmas shortly after we bought a house big enough for good furniture. One of the pieces was a china cabinet. So he decided that we needed, yep, china.
We have a pretty set - white with a delicate floral rim. I don’t know how “good” it is, but I like it a lot. It requires hand-washing, so I use it very rarely.
After all these years, we’re still really Corelle people. 
But I am happy that I have the china.
I can’t decide if you should be highly commended or thrown out the back door for that pun. Probably both. 
I wonder how many families became “Corelle people” when they had small children or grandchildren, and then just never went back. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if that’s what happened with my grandparents.
My in-laws use paper plates for Passover seders, to make cleanup manageable.
They must have had a moonshine business that you didn’t know about
I recently discovered, under an ancient houseplant, a dinner plate that is the one remaining piece from the earliest everyday china that I remember. It’s a white plate, with blue, 3-dimensional oak leaves and acorns around the edge. I remember that set so well; I can’t believe my father used the one remaining piece as a houseplant saucer.
We have multiple sets of fancy china from dead grandparents, a set from my wife’s mother who passed, plus the stuff we foolishly registered for. We have gotten better at getting them out.
This thread makes me think of Open that Bottle Night: http://guides.wsj.com/wine/entertaining-and-celebrating-with-wine/open-that-bottle-night/
For those people who keep “special” bottles of wine that they are saving for a special occasion.
So crack open the wine, get out the china, and enjoy yourself.
I’m still using what my mom gave me 20+ years later. Sure, we’ve broken a few pieces along the way, but I think that people prefer Corelle because of its durability and its attractiveness. A few years ago, I was considering replacing my Corelle and was very impressed with how many lovely (and affordable) choices there were. I eventually decided to continue using what I have, but the shopping experience was enlightening. I wonder how much the development/popularity of Corelle impacted the china market. We eat off good dishes every day. They aren’t the “good dishes” simply because I have china, but I don’t see my children owning china. They won’t need to. They will have access to good products designed for everyday use.
I was in the Art Museum this weekend. They had some very old chairs (1500’s, 1600’s) where the public could access them; touch them, & sit in them if it wasn’t for the fancy braided rope dangling there preventing you from doing such.
Those heavy plastic slipcovers serve the exact same purpose as the rope across the armrests because I don’t want to sit on any chair/sofa that has them. They’re noisy, uncomfortable, & Og forbid you’re wearing shorts in the summer. :eek:
Keeps the chairs/sofas in like-new condition so that they can be passed down as family heirlooms. “What do you mean that you don’t you want my 50-yo floral sofa that looks as new as the day we got it from OUR parents?”