Wedding Blog

During Mr. Caterpillar’s bachelor days, he lived like a . . . I would say bear, but bears don’t have closets filled with unplayable mixtapes from 1996 or drink out of jam jars, so I’m going to go with “hobo bear with a giant collection of unplayable mixtapes.” When we began to spend more time together, he went to Ikea and purchased two 98-cent glasses. One of those was for me. (If you know the horror of the Elizabeth, NJ Ikea on a weekend, you will know this was a sign of a great deep love.) I wasn’t complaining. I lived on Qdoba burritos, so most of my plates were made out of foil. We refer to those days as Camp Caterpillar.

When it came to be registry time, our consultant at Worst Registry Place in All of New York City basically bullied us into choosing two full china services and two full flatware services (sterling and stainless) FOR SIXTEEN. (Did we even know 16 people?) She also tried to convince us that we needed a full St. Louis crystal service, including cordial glasses. So we found ourselves with this enormous, bizarre registry. Like maybe Princess Diana had a registry like this, only with less stuff.

In the end, the online ordering website for this place was fraught with complications and difficulty and was down all the time, and only one order ever got through. It was for a single saucer. So, it looked like Camp Caterpillar was going to be in business for a while longer. I had visions of slowly collecting 16 jam jars over the years and serving anniversary dinners on left over burrito foil. But then, out of the blue, Mr. Caterpillar’s godfather swept in and gave us his family china and silver service. It was stunning — the gesture as much as the gift. And we use it every day.

Silver takes almost no special care; it just needs to be dried by hand. And the china has survived several dinners with children and cats and hobo bears. So, I’m a total convert. I’m in love with the Meissen Arabian Nights pattern above, and I’ve wrangled a few items from the Meissen My Favorite Bugs pattern into the house. I’ll let you know when my tureen comes; then you’re all invited to dinner!