Registry

Registries... tons of fun? It was, sorta. There's a lot more that goes into this than I think either of us realized.

1) What are the realistic price ranges for our friends/family. We may love that $600 pot set, but that's not something we should count on getting. A lot of our friends are young, and have more important things to devote their money than to a $600 pot set for J & B. So, we're trying to find a lot of items in the $20-$60 range, as well as a lot of smaller items. And, of course, there's the occassional big item that we hope we get.

2) Piecemail sets or not? So we can't get the $600 pot set (We wouldn't, most likely, and please, seriously, if you were going to get us that pot set, please just give us a check instead!)... so should we order a set piecemail? As in, one person gets us a $40 pan, another gets us a $40 pot, etc etc. Well, we realized THAT'S risky, because what if we get only 2 pots and pans? We'd be left buying ourselves the rest of the set... I think we decided to not put down pots and pans, and instead to plan on buying those for ourselves from Costco. Costco is goign to be on our registry, but only as a place where we list "giftcards only".

3) How do you indicate preference? Yes, a panini maker would be AWESOME, but we'd prefer to get two flatware sets (I think those are the ones we liked... B has it written down). And while they may seem typical, we'd really like the kitchen canisters . I wish there was a ranking system.

4) The quantity of things to put on the registry. This sort of goes with #3. Say we NEED 20 things. Well, that's not enough for the registry. So we add in 50 things that we like, but don't need. How do you indicate those that you need?

5) We will be moving. In the next year and a half, we want to get a house... so everything we request has to be NOT geared to our current apartment. You wouldn't think this would be hard, but it is. For eg, B has a love of potracks and we need some sort of under counter wineglass holder, but we don't know if either will fit into where we eventually end up. So we have to go with the items that will be flexible, because we'd hate someone to buy us somethign that we can't use in the near future.

6) Styles... We don't want to go for the "in" things too much. Misseireann had the good anology for me of "don't be like the 70's people and request things in avocado color." Hm.

7) Colors. Do you realize how much kitchen stuff is nowadays in color?? Rachel Ray has some CUTE cookware sets , KitchenAid too , and while they're adorable, a) how will we know we want that color in 5 years, b) how will we know that color will go with our future home, c) replacements will be hard to find, and d) how do you get all them to match? You'll get stuck buying from one brand only, hoping they don't discontinue the tomato red color or something. Plus, who's to say tomato red won't be "oh-so out" in a year? Grumble. I actually had this problem when someone bought me a wonderful Kitchenaid mixer for grad school graduation. I really wanted a colorful one, but I opted for a silver finish one because it'd went with just about any decor and wouldn't go out of style. And I am SOO glad I did.

There are other issues, but you get the gist.
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I suppose the result of all this is that if you don't get what you need, you buy it yourself. And really, this all sounds materialistic because it's about gifts. We're expecting gifts, and that feels weird.

I've seen lots of bad registries (too many places, too many things that don't go together, too haphazardly put together, too many cheap things, too many expensive things, too many things, too few things, etc etc), and B and I are TRYING to not fall into those categories. We have a list of things we want right now, but nothing's officially been scanned into a registry. We have about 3 weeks to get it done, but that's not a problem.

But, I must finish with a rave about my future husband. He is wonderful. He actually convinced me out of a sage coverlet with fantastic decor flexibility and cat fur arguments. And he made a great argument for a different set of china because the one we both liked didn't have the lace pattern china details. And I totally agreed. He makes me see things from different perspectives. Sometimes we agree, sometimes we don't. Sometimes he compromises, sometimes I do, sometimes we both do. He really does make me better.