So, it’s getting close to my wedding (Sept. 21st), and my family has been doing good at not driving me completely insane.
Except for my gift registry. They don’t like it.
See, we have everything we need – we’ve been living together for going on two years. What we really want is to get to go on a honeymoon. So we did a honeymoon registry.
Well, some of my family doesn’t like that idea. Ok, it’s untraditional and I guess a bit odd. So we did a “regular” kitchenware registry. He’s an amatuer chef, so he picked out all of the cool things he’s always wanted (like a sashimi knife) and I picked out some pretty glasses because we’ve broken most of ours. We picked out things in a price range from $5 - 89, plus the store automatically adds gift certificates in various amounts. Please, go to http://surlatable.com and search for “Potter, Sept. 2002” We’re the only one. Tell me if you find anything intrinsically wrong with my registry.
Well, no one in my family wants to buy anything from it. And they keep asking me what I want as a gift. Do I need a crock pot? Do I want a silver chaffing (?) dish? They claim they can’t use the registry because it’s online. Well, there are two stores here in Houston, and more elsewhere. Well, can’t I just give them a list of things I want?
I DID! THAT’S WHAT THE REGISTRY IS!
And, no, I am not registering at Target or Wal*Mart, so stop asking!
OK, this is weird. I clicked on your link and got the home page, but none of the graphics loaded up. When I first clicked on it, I got a “Page cannot be displayed” message. When I clicked on the link on THAT page. I got the home page and, again, the graphics did not load.
I see the SDMB hamsters aren’t the only ones with problems.
Both links are working for me, maybe I’m just lucky
Cessandra, your registry looks perfectly reasonable to me! Far more reasonable than some of the ones I’ve seen before-- I know a couple who registered for a $1200 china cabinet “because we have relatives who can’t travel to the wedding so we figure they owe us a big gift.” No, I’m not making that up. And they didn’t get the cabinet. But I digress.
You seem to have registered for genuinely useful things at a decent range of prices, at a place that has on line shopping and various real-world locations. Works for me, can’t figure why your family’s giving you a hard time. And I don’t know anybody who needs a silver chafing dish!
You have our sympathies. Featherlou and I opened our wedding gifts today and most of them came straight off our gift registry. Granted, our registry was pretty conventional and at one of the larger Canadian chains (The Bay), but we certainly didn’t get grief about the items on the list or its accessibility.
We think you should stand your ground on what you guys want. If there’s one thing I hate, it’s when people try to force their way of doing things on you after you’ve already completed the task at hand.
We think the honeymoon registry is a fabulous alternative for the couple who already has everything, by the way.
The registry is there as a convenience to the nice people who want to buy you a gift–or feel obligated to–but don’t know what to get you. It’s not for people too lazy to think for themselves.
And now they’re trying to be even lazier and mae you tell them what to buy.
Sigh.
My two cents is let 'em buy whatever they want. If they offer a chafing dish, let 'em. Send a lovely note of thanks.
Then return it, give it to some other poor newlyweds, or just hawk the thing on eBay.
'Cos if they’re that set on your telling them what to do, they won’t be happy until you do.
Maybe it’s because they think you two are setting up for a psychopathic killing spree? It is, after all, the best kind of killing spree available at this time. You did ask for a grand total of 24 knives… What kind of honeymoon are ya’ll planning on taking? Seriously, though, it looked pretty reasonable to me, and that sashimi knife looked totally bitchin’. Of course, I don’t know anything about wedding registries so I suppose you should just ignore me.
Thank you, Jimbo. I went over our registry today and only one thing has been purchased. A swimming suit (for the cruise). And I happen to know that many of my relatives have already bought gifts.
I don’t happen to know if they are coming to the wedding, OTOH, because none of them bothered to RSVP, either.
Which brings up a point. No one RSVPd the bridal shower until I called everyone the day before and asked point-blank if they were coming. I did this because the bridesmaid who threw the party said she wasn’t throwing a party if no one was coming. She said she’d just take us out to dinner instead.
If no one RSVPs my wedding, would it be too rude to bail on it and go to the JP?
My take on the no-RSVP thing? You can always pop off to the 24 Hour Church of Elvis in Portland, OR. Lord knows, I campaigned for that option (and got vetoed) several times, although it looked more and more appealing for both of us near the end.
Yes, Featherlou, but I already knew that. But they’re doing really good with the wedding; they’ve cut way back on the evil-o-meter. [Joe Rogan] And they’ve promised to only hit me on the leg from now on, and only at half strength. [/Joe Rogan]
Hubbie-to-be wants to do the Elvis bit. And if we don’t get more responses, I may call the few who did RSVP (one of my three sets of grandparents, one of His friends, and one of my grandmother’s friends) and have them meet us in Vegas.
Have you considered killing them all individually and in alphabetical order? Doesn’t really accomplish anything, but I find that thinking about it for a few minutes tends to relieve wedding-related stress caused by the family.
Oh, and congratulations! We’ve still got four months for our families to drive us crazy.
You have my sympathies as well. I am just getting into the registry thing, although CCL has been at it for a while. I fear registering for kitchen stuff, because I cook a lot and I’m a real snob about my cookware. I have all the cheap cookware I need, so if I registered for anything, it would be quality stuff.
I can hear my family now. “$80 for one chef’s knife? Why, here’s a whole set of knives for $40! And look, these never need to be sharpened!”
That’s why we’re doing most of our registering at Sears, since both of our families understand the difference between quality and crap when it comes to tools.
Congratulations! I’m getting married the same day!
My SO and I are having the same problem! AAAAAAA!!
I just tell people to whatever I think they want to hear. We are planning a big trip to Crate and Barrel (one of the many stores we did not register at) to return all their ugly shit. (except for the totally sweet ice cream maker) With big smiles!
It’ll all be over soon and I expect you’ll be happily married. Please join me in breathing slow and smiling big.
Cessandra, I’ll take a dozen of the tall glasses, the bread knife, two of the carving knives, one set of steak knives…wha?..Oh, I see, it’s stuff YOU want. Humph! I want it too!
Seriously, I see nothing there unreasonably or outrageously priced. As for the silver chafing dish, just tell em “we don’t plan on serving great big steaming honking piles of meatballs when we entertain, so it’d just end up in the front yard as a planter.”
That oughta stop the chafing dish threat.
Best wishes to the both of ya!
And best wishes to Fretburner.
And congrats to Featherlou and Dread Pirate Jimbo on the wedding.
And best wishes to CrazyCatLady and DoctorJ
I hear you, Cess. When we got married 3 years ago, we registered at Sears, Foley’s and Crate & Barrel. We had a WIDE range of prices, from tools that were under $10 to a vacuum cleaner for a couple hundred. (We thought maybe a group or family might go in together on the vacuum but didn’t really expect to get it…and then hubby’s uncle from England bought it on his own!)
Anyway…we ended up with duplicate things from the registry, duplicates of things we registered for but not the thing we registered for (like a set of knives, just not the ones we wanted) and pleny of stuff we didn’t register for and didn’t even know where it came from so we couldn’t return it. All in all, there were four knife sets, three rice steamers, three crock pots, about a million silver picture frames, a really ugly dish of some sort that looks like one of those spiny sea urchins (hasn’t been out of the box since!), a juice set with glasses that literally hold 2 oz…the list goes on.
For all the duplicates and items we hated, of course we’d much rather have had money or gift certificates or things from the registry, but that’s just how it goes. We sent lovely thank you notes and appreciated the thought. We also gave knife sets to two couples that got married soon after us, my dad got a free rice steamer and my best friend got a new crock pot. Everybody was happy.
People just don’t always use the registry. Sometimes they like it to be a “surprise”, some people don’t like to use the little machine at the store or go ask the salesperson. Some people always give the same thing no matter whose wedding it is. My brother didn’t give us a gift off the registry because he said he wanted to give us something special, that nobody else gave us (like a place setting of dishes) and so that we would think of him every time we used it. So he gave us a DVD player and we love it and we do think of him every time we use it. Anyway, what I’m trying to say is that people sometimes have their own reason for not wanting to use the registry. It doesn’t always score with you, but oh well.
Or maybe they just don’t want to buy you knives. I did see that ONE short bee glass has been purchased. “Honey, I’m thirsty…hurry up with the glass already!” hee!
Congrats on your marriage, and just try to enjoy things.
