You’ve registered for a KitchenAid mixer? If you get it, I swear I’ll mug you. I want one!
I had to wait 20 years to inherit my KitchenAid. Of course, my mom’s actually still alive, but she’s an old lady; I bullied her out of it. 
Your bridal (groomal? I think I like that better) registry consultant has a financial interest in promoting the custom of big spending on wedding gifts. Of course the nice HBC lady wants you to encourage your guests to spend $250 at her store.
Uh, speak for yourself, dear. When I married, I registered for and received 8 place settings of special occasion china and flatware (in addition to everyday items) and used them twice within 6 months when I served both Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners at my home.
Newlyweds are trending to be older these days, people who already have careers and extended social networks. They own homes – or are living in something more than “starter” apartments, at least – and entertain in them. That’s not abnormal, that’s becoming more and more typical.
Why? There are more than a few people who are more than capable of buying a beloved couple a very nice gift which, barring bizarre incident, will last the duration of their marriage and beyond, and will want to do so. (My mother is still using my grandmother’s KitchenAid. They last forever.) So long as there are items on the registry which are available to those who don’t have several hundred dollars to allocate to a gift, who could it possibly harm to register for some “special wish” items that are pricey?
Clearly that’s not always the case. I expect to be invited when my only sister’s only son gets married next year. He lives in Memphis and I live in NYC and have since he was six years old, and I’ve met his fiancee twice. I certainly don’t know their likes and dislikes well enough to buy them a gift which is intended to be used with any frequency in their home. That’s just ridiculous.
Yeah, see the prior mentions in the thread about 12 picnic baskets, 8 toasters and a concerted effort to provide flatware that hit on the pattern which made the bride barmy. Why on earth would you give someone a “general” gift that puts a burden on them to either act grateful for something they dislike, find a way to wedge something unwanted into their lives or try to return the gift after returning from their honeymoon and trying to settle into a time in their lives which needn’t be filled with such mundane administrative tasks? The purpose of giving a gift is to enhance the reciever, not to cause them problems.
That used to be the norm, having the gifts delivered to the bride, generally at her parents’ home. They would be opened as they were received, thank you notes would be written immediately and while the couple honeymooned, the bride’s parents would take the responsibility of moving the gift items to the home where the couple would be living when the returned.
The idea of carrying a gift to the wedding itself was considered tacky and never done. Not only did it (once again) put a burden on the recepients, it was thought to be an effort to be conspicuous givers.
So, long story short: registries have multiple benefits and few drawbacks. They help facilitate useful, meaningful, convenient gift-giving.
Complaining about registries smacks of sour grapes to me.
Yup babe, sour grapes. Come, join me in a tart glass of wine. Help me toast my new resolution to restrict my future wedding gifting to giving the happy couple a card expressing my heartfelt joy at their bonding. No mere trinket, no foul bag of monies, could ever adequately honor the nobility and purity of their storied romance.
Bugger this. From here on in, it’s wine or a card. I reject the wedding culture of greed. In future I will RSVP with my best wishes and my regrets. Thank god I’m from a small family of people who usually opt to live in sin. It’ll save on stamps.
Do you reject the giving of gifts on birthdays, Christmas, and other holidays as well?
Oh, let me guess. You’re one of the people who gives newlyweds those horrible crystal bowls and vases and mantel clocks, aren’t you? Or china picture frames with wedding-related poems on them?
Trust me, those things do NOT work with any decor. There is not one single room in my house that they look even halfway decent in. The best I’ve managed with the ones we got for our wedding is to stick them on a bottom shelf where no one ever looks.
I got off light, thanks to our registry. A friend of mine didn’t register, and they wound up with no fewer than fifteen mantel clocks (they’ve never lived anywhere that even had a mantel at all), and a dozen china wedding picture frames. They used one clock and one frame, and the rest sat in a box under the bed until they got regifted for other weddings.
For my money, that kind of utter disregard for the preferences and needs of the gifted is far more tacky than a list of things you’d like to have could ever be.
A few weeks ago my best friend received a lovely, tasteful trivet(? or something) in the shape of a heart enclosing a cross. It was made of nails. It came with a horrible poem about how the heart reminds everyone who see it of love and the cross and nails of Jesus’ sacrifice.
It was awful. I expect she’ll regift it very soon, probably to someone she doesn’t like.
I use my china as “everyday” dishes sometimes at my place, and when we have people over for dinner. Frankly, I wish I had bought more of it. It’s very high quality, but the pattern is discontinued. Meanwhile, in 5 years of marriage we’re already on our second set of everyday dishes and thinking about getting a new set. Both sets we’ve bought have warped and chipped somewhat, and the first one had the glaze crackle. The chipping is obviously wear-and-tear, but I don’t think the warping is.
I don’t see what the big fuss about registries is. As long as the wedding couple doesn’t break etiquette by announcing it in their invitations or other obvious fashions, or to actually complain around guests when someone buys them something not on the registry, then it has no effect on anyone who doesn’t seek it out. It’s not a money tree or anything. Of course you always get the greedy Bridezillas who register for a ton of expensive items and hint broadly about what they want; give them some money or nothing at all.
For those I love, nope. But in my circle, xmas and birthday gifts run along the lines of a DVD or a $30 frying pan, not extravagant swag.See, in my family, if we want something, we go buy it ourselves-that way we get what we want. That’s how I got my kitchenaid.
This strikes me as a good guideline, actually- wedding gifts for people I already exchange b-day and Xmas gifts with. If we aren’t close enough for that, we aren’t close enough for wedding gifts. Thanks for the inspiration, racinchikki.
I am adding my point of view here…
wedding registries are VERY usefull and completely practical.
I am getting married next year, so I have been through the whole registry process, and I received gifts for the engagement. Most gifts were right off the registry, but there were a few that were not. Of those gifts, there are only 2 that I will ever use.
and several unreturnable gifts that I am never going to use in my life.
A registry eliminates the chance of getting 12 toasters and 7 coffe makers and having to return them all… The last thing a newlywed couple needs to do is return all of their gifts…
It also eliminates the chance that some of your “not so hip” guests to get you something that you will hate.
the gifts on my registry are gifts that my fiance and I both agree on. That way, we are not going to get things that people will buy with me in mind but my fiance will hate… or vice versa
Lets face it… most of my extended family barely knows ME… how are they going to pick a gift for 2 people…
The people who are closest to us will know what we really need…and they will also probably pick out something they know we would appreciate on their own.
btw, I have noticed in my family that most of the time the registry gifts are for the engagement party, and the shower.
Most people just give money for the wedding.
The problem with “scoping out a place” (and I’m agreeing with you, BTW) or being a “close friend” or family member who “should know the couple really well” is that there’s no guarantee you’ll know anything about what they already own. Not everyone keeps everything out in plain site (I’m far too tidy for that).
One would have to intrude seriously and rummage through my cupboards to determine whether or not I already own a Crockpot. You’d have to hunt through my kitchen drawers and look under my table linens to find out that I already have a fancy fondue kit.
Come to think of it, I’ve been with Sniffs_Markers for almost three years. We’ve made countless meals in her kitchen and we’ve made countless in mine – and I can not tell you whether or not she has a blender.
I don’t mind registries really (that are reasonable and not asking me to finance their kitchen renovation or something.) I have dear friends that have been together for ages and I’d be thrilled to attend their wedding. I have no idea if they even have an egg beater!
When I make the guest list for our wedding, if I only invite people who are likely to know what the inside of my apartment looks like, it’s going to just be me and Gunslinger in front of an empty church. If I only invite people who have a decent understanding of my taste in interior design, the guest list will consist of my parents, my sister, and my best friend from high school.
If, on the other hand, I invite people based on how much we care for each other as people (not as interior decorators), I’m going to end up with a whole lot of friends and family from back home who have never seen my house and with whom I’ve never had occasion to speak at length about my taste.
If they don’t give me presents, that’s fine - I’m going to get married for sentimental reasons, not to get gifts and eat overpriced cake. If they want to give me presents, that’s fine, too - it’s not like they’re going to ask me first. And it’s just as rude to say “No presents!” as it is to say “Money only!” or “You will find a list of approved presents printed on the back of this invitation” - you’re not supposed to show that you’re assuming presents were intended in the first place. All you can do, politely, is wait until somebody asks. Which is what I’m going to do. And then, if they do ask, they will be directed to my registry, which will consist of several items under $20, a Kitchenaid mixer as the only big-ticket, and everything else will be between $20 and $50.
I’m sorry you think this method of doing things is rude, but quite frankly I disagree, and as you’re not invited to my wedding you should feel quite secure in the knowledge that you’ll not have to worry about it yourself. 
I was going to come in here and agree with what Motorgirl said, but now I’ve read so many posts I’ve forgotten what that was.
Sounds to me like the OP may have been put into a situation (or perhaps more than one) where a married-couple-to-be were exhibiting rude, tacky, bully-ish behavior, leaving the OP to feel like if s/he didn’t buy a gift from the registry, she would be condemned to a Hell of Bad Tchotchkes for eternity.
I’ve known people like that; they may not be so bold as to put the registry information in the invitation, but they let it be known in casual conversation (sans prompting of any sort) that they hate it when people don’t buy from the registry (one such friend waxed quite frenzied on the topic of how she considered it rude for people to ignore the registry, but then mere months after her own wedding did exactly that, because she couldn’t abide this bride’s taste in china, and couldn’t bear to give an “ugly” gift), or let it be known which particular items from the registry are most preferred.
That is one thing I won’t do; I have had friends ask not just where I’m registered (which I’ll divulge), but which registry items I secretly want the most (which I won’t divulge–I won’t even admit that I have secret favorites, although hell yes, I do).
Skip and I–who eloped and were not planning to have any parties, but have consented to a small shindig thrown by my mother–were not planning to register, but were kind of pressured into it by the people invited to the party, because most of them are women in their mid-70s who don’t trust themselves to know the taste of a couple of crazy kids.
So we registered for a short list of items, strictly for the 20 or so attendees of this party, to give them some guidance if they feel that they need it. (Trouble is, my damn out-of-town friends have somehow managed to find out my registry location without my help, and are buying shit from it, too!)
And to be honest, we registered for a lot of things that we don’t really need (for example, we already have two toasters between us, but registered for a third) just to plump up the list a little bit, because even after we registered, people were complaining that our list wasn’t long enough! (Weird.)
Anyway, as I was saying, it’s one thing to choose not to have a registry yourself, but the fact that the OP seems to be condemning anyone who does it makes me think that s/he has encountered too many people who haven’t managed to do a registry with grace.
I chose the banana holder.
Because it was funny.
But now, so close to party time, I see that no one else appreciates my humor: the banana holder still remains, unpurchased, on the registry.
So now I have to make plans on opening a can of banana-flavored whoopass on a group of doddering old women. It’ll break my heart, understand ('cause the elderly make me chuckle–especially when they’re out driving), but I’ve really come to love and want that banana holder.
I love the idea of a wedding registry. Dang it. I probably won’t ever get married. Too bad I can’t have a “Single girl registry.”
My mom always liked the idea of a midlife registry, for when all the stuff from your wedding finally wears out. I swear, one of these days she will get some decent kitchen pans. She burned oatmeal in the bottom of one of hers so darn many times that I got sick of her complaining about it, and went to TJ Maxx and got her a nice nonstick saucepan. I think it cost all of $7. No more burnt oatmeal soaking in the sink for days at a time!
And don’t start me on the state of her bath towels!
Next project: knives that actually are capable of being sharpened, and preferably at least one of which has a blade more than 2-1/2" long. She’s 60 years old; time for some decent knives! I never will understand what she spends money on. Oh well; at least I’ll never be lacking for gift ideas for Mom.
I believe a recent episode of sex and the city answered that you can do that… 
(yes, even I, opposed the the idea, can still have a sense of humour about it LOL - though I did have to Google the term “KitchenAid Mixer” to find out what people where talking about) 
Speaking of KitchenAid mixers and wedding registries, my sister called me today to ask if I’d like to join in with her and our mother to buy a wedding present for my cousin. I asked about her registry, checked it out online, and called my sister and said “Get her the KitchenAid mixer, and I’ll cover whatever’s left after you and mom put in the amount you want to put in.”
I wouldn’t have done that if it weren’t for this thread.
Well, a friend of mine had her tubes tied (at the age of 26 – she has never, ever, ever wanted kids. Never ever.) and her sister threw her a “She’s Not Having a Baby” party. Okay, so they did not have a registry, but funny enough, without any prompting, everyone brought “shower” gifts. Stuff for a single, childless woman to really enjoy. It was a blast.
Indygrrl… maybe we could have a potluck…