I’ve seen a lot of moms so a drizzle for baby #2.
Our #2 didn’t actually get a shower, both because we had everything we needed from #1 and because the pregnancy was a little rocky so we didn’t feel much like celebrating until she was safe and sound at home.
This is the crux of disagreement for what I quoted earlier.
Nothing is inherently rude. There are no rude atoms or rude waves out in the universe that we can measure.
Rudeness is entirely a social construct, and as such, if society says “it’s rude to ask people for gifts”, then that is rude; but if society says “it is rude not to provide a registry link so people can buy your present in as few clicks as possible”, then now THIS is what holds for determining rudeness.
By now, online registries are absolutely ubiquitous for events like showers and weddings. In that reality, it no longer makes sense to say that giving a registry is “rude”. Not even a little.
I don’t see it as gauche. It might be if they only included items that would be be considered high priced by their guests. But they didn’t.
Having a wish list with some more expensive stuff is fine. It’s even useful: it tells you not to bother with a cheaper, less fully featured version.
I can imagine versions of this which would seem gauche. If they were the richest people there, invited only poorer people, and had primarily gifts on their registry that were too expensive for any of them, that would be gauche. But, even then, I’d follow the basic etiquette of assume good faith and suspect they were just out of touch. If I knew them well, I might even take them aside and explain that the stuff they are asking for may be out of reach for their guests.
Still, this isn’t that version. This is just a wishlist being used as a gift registry. It’s a part of Ask culture, not Guess culture. You know, the “it doesn’t hurt to ask” people rather than the “they should figure it out” people.
Given your personality, @Dinsdale, I would think you’d prefer the former. You seem to love it when things are explicit, not implicit. Hence all the questions.
Are they two very different strollers?
For baby #1 we had a stroller with small, hard wheels for going on sidewalks or at the mall, and a stroller with giant bicycle wheels for jogging or going off road. (We actually had a third stroller, a cheaper one that we initially put on our registry, but being cheap it was terrible so we had to replace it with the two I mentioned, both of which we got used).
Also, I can second the Snoo being amazing. We bought a used one ($300!) for Baby #2 and it was amazing. She has outgrown it now, we gave it to friends who also had a baby, when they’re done with it we will need to decide if we want to keep it in case there’s a #3 or if we want to sell it (hopefully for $300!!)
I’m happy to be old fashioned. Any “shower” invitations come addressed to my gf. It’s a woman’s thing, and I’m not complaining.
Want me to spend a thousand dollars on your baby? Let’s start with a paternity test.
Baby showers have been about 50:50 mixed gender or all women IME. Certainly not the worst event to go to.
Nah. It is never rude for people not to expect or request other people to give them gifts at all. It is always more gracious to celebrate your life milestones with people you care about without focusing on what material recompense they’re going to provide you in exchange.
That fundamental principle of human interaction doesn’t alter, and there’s nothing about “society nowadays” that has altered it.
Consequently, any form of explicit expression of an expectation of gifts is, yes, always going to be just a touch rude, compared to the graciousness gold standard of not requiring to be compensated for celebrating your happiness with your loved ones.
But it’s true that to the extent that any form of explicit gift-requesting becomes socially tolerated, there’s nothing intrinsically more rude about saying “give me something from this registry” than saying “give me some kind of gift from somewhere” or “give me money”.
My gf has told me about stupid games being played. Also, they tend to be alcohol free. Not my cuppa. Oh, and a pregnant lady opens gifts while everyone watches, ohhhs, and awwws. Nope.
Go into a bookstore and get a few of the standard first books for children. You’re not going to the shower, so just mail those books to your nephew and his wife. They might appreciate this enough to send you a thank-you note or they might not. If any case, don’t worry about this any more.
For some reason, I really hate the entire Gender Reveal foofarah. Why in the world should I care that you now know you’re expecting a little Bertie and not a Betty? Finding out post delivery is fine by me.
Registries for showers and weddings are great! I know they will want whatever I am getting and they won’t be getting duplicates of the same thing (unless that is wanted.) As long as there is a range of prices to choose from I am very glad to have them.
My (pretty mild) irritation is related to the controlling (to me) pretty inconsequential information, and then doling it out in some elaborate manner. You’re having a kid? Great. I hope everyone is healthy and happy. But if you won’t tell me the gender or names you are considering, that pretty much exhausts my interest in the matter. Totally your choice to control the info, but also totally my choice to cease to be interested.
And, re: the list - I guess I have a personal dislike for the acquisition of (IMO) ridiculously overpriced and (again IMO) unnecessary stuff. Just something about the general circulation of a list containing such pricey stuff (which the recipient intends to resell later), from people who are (IMO) so wealthy, just sorta strikes me as in poor taste/lacking class…
Additional minor thoughts are - before you have the kid, you really don’t know what you are going to want. And - from my perspective as an old fart - many new parents seem to not realize how fleeting the infant stage is. The get all this expensive crap, and w/i a year or 2 - or less - it is just stuff you have to store (if expecting additional kids) or get rid of.
I didn’t look at the details of the various stollers, car seats, etc. I know things cost more and are safer these days. It looked like there were a number of high chairs/car seats/strollers/modular aspects. But I only looked closely enough to get my sizabe nose out of joint! 
This is just another situation where I wonder how I and my kids survived w/ so much less, cheaper, and hand-me-down stuff.
Okay, now I’m offended!
That really changes the optics. Assuming everyone knows that (i certainly didn’t) that makes tons of sense.
A registry isn’t a request for gifts. It’s a list of items you would appreciate in case friends choose to give you a gift at an occasion where almost everyone gives gifts.
A baby shower kinda is a request for gifts. I mean, that’s the whole point, right? But a wedding is a celebration of a marriage, and the registry is a convenience for those who wish to give a gift. Fwiw, i usually give gifts off the registry for friends, but these days I’m often invited to weddings of my friends’ children, or younger relatives, and then i often shop from the registry.
Interesting to know about the 10% discount, though. That explains some odd items I’ve seen on registries.
New parents are already unrealistic in terms of how interesting their babies are. I look back at things I shared when mine was an infant and even I’m bored with how inane it all is.
Gender Reveals are just a new fangled way for them to act like their baby is the center of the universe.
At MY baby shower, we setup a 10x10 grid of possible names, first and middle, and let people guess the name by buying boxes, then we revealed the name at the end of the party. Gender, Name, and Gambling all at once.
Not in itself, sure. But handing out your registry information, unsolicited, as part of your party invitation DOES imply a request or at least expectation of gifts.
There has never been and never will be a way to explicitly announce what gifts you would like, in the context of a celebration traditionally involving gift-giving, WITHOUT to some extent conveying a subtext of “and I’m expecting that my guests will give me some of them.”
It’s an expectation that at least some people will give you gifts. Honestly, this is such a reasonable expectation that when couples marry and don’t want gifts, they usually say so very explicitly, and sometimes get gifts anyway. I have a funky serving bowl painted with puzzle pieces because i attended a wedding celebration of friends who lived on the other side of the country, who had requested “no gifts, please”, and were gifted this large, heavy, fragile, ceramic bowl. They were staring at it, saying, “what on earth can we do with this”, when they spotted me, preparing to leave, and asked if I’d like it.
(I was short on serving bowls, lived half an hour away by car, and was delighted to take it home. I use it every time i host a large party, and think of them fondly. 
)
I’ve been invited to several “no gifts, please” weddings, and one that both said “no gifts, please”, and also, “if you really want to give us something, here’s a registry, but honest, we just want your company.”
Prepare for the mindblowing: 
Explicitly specifying “no gifts, please” ALSO falls a little bit short of the full “graciousness gold standard”.
The principle isn’t that it’s somehow more gracious to tell your guests not to give you gifts for your celebration than to say or hint that you do expect gifts. No, the principle is that it’s most gracious to be focusing on the pleasure of your guests’ company and the happiness of the celebration, rather than raising the subject of material compensation/tribute in any form.
Gifts are never obligatory, so it’s entirely up to your guests whether or in what form they want to give you anything. You are allowed to leave it up to them.
(Of course, any guests who do really want guidance on desirable gifts are totally free to ask you for suggestions, or ask somebody close to you who knows what you’d like—as long as they find a reliable source, unlike doreen’s peach-loving mother, for example. 
And if they do ask, of course you can show them your shopping list, in the form of a store registry or anything else. The key point is that that’s not an unsolicited indication of expecting gifts.)
I’m aware of that. I’m also aware of couples who have been silent on the topic, and either got a lot of gifts when they really didn’t want anything, or got a lot of frustrated requests for the registry info to be easier to find. Or both.
The fact is that in America today, it is customary to give couples a gift if you attend their wedding celebration. And ignoring that might be proper etiquette, but it’s also awkward for all involved.
Like I said up there. Gifts for babies being born has been going on forever. Relative to your situation it’s a normal.
Since we crawled out of the caves.
I had a situation with my first baby of two sets of Grandparents competing who could get the most impressive gifts(yes, plural).
You wouldn’t believe it, if I told you what that baby got.
Yes, it’s situational, it’s according to financial means and social circles
We just live in the age where it’s very easy to shop online and make lists on shopping sites.
This very morning I got a notification of something going on sale that’s on my grown daughters wish list.
If a person is invited to a baby shower go buy the baby a savings bond if you don’t wanna buy from a gift registry.
In what culture? In what contexts? What do you mean by “obligatory”?
There are certainly cultures where not properly participating in gift giving exchanges downright prevents you from fully engaging in said culture. If that isn’t “obligatory”, I don’t know what is.
And if we can accept that two cultures in two different places across the world behave differently and have different standards, why can’t we say the same thing about the US culture of 2024 versus the US culture as it was whenever Miss Manners built up her idea of what is “proper”?
Exactly.
In the US today, among my marrying and kid having peers in the 25-45 year old range and their immediate families, if you invite someone to a wedding or a baby shower without either a registry link or an explicit note that you don’t want gifts, you will create confusion and awkwardness. Creating confusion and awkwardness is rude in a descriptivist sense, no matter what prescriptivist ideas the octogenarian Miss Manners has about ‘proper etiquette’.