Weddingbee Blog

One of the things that I had been looking forward to, but also kinda dreading, was creating our registry. I’m pretty sure this is something that you’re supposed to do before you get to the less-than-one-hundred-days mark, but apparently we like to leave things until a little later in the process. (And yeah—I now know how much time we have until the wedding because both of our registries have a huge countdown on the front page. Yikes!)

At first I thought that we’d just create an Amazon registry since they have the universal-registry option and we could add anything that we wanted to it. But then we realized that there are some people who prefer going to an actual store to pick something out. So we created registries at Macy’s and Crate and Barrel along with our Amazon registry.

We started at Macy’s and had entirely too much fun with the scanning gun. Or at least Mr. EB did—he’s a big fan of getting to play with any kind of toy. Of course, since we were having so much fun, this is the only picture I ended up getting of the process:

This is Mr. EB’s way of telling me to put the camera down already.

It was actually a pretty fun process—partially because the consultants were busy with other people, so we were left to our own devices to wander the store, and partially because it ended up being a lot of fun picking things out. We decided that we really wanted to keep our registry to items that we would love to have but wouldn’t necessarily buy for ourselves. Plus, since Mr. EB and I live together, we have a lot of things that are in perfectly good condition, such as our everyday dishes and flatware. But we did decide we wanted to register for nice china, so we found a pattern that we liked with a price that didn’t give me a heart attack.

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We also added some new All Clad pots and pans, a larger Le Creuset oval baker, and a new tea kettle (because we use ours every day, and it’s definitely time for a new one). And of course I had to add the ubiquitous KitchenAid mixer. I know that it’s almost a cliche at this point for being on everyone’s registry, but I have put off buying this for myself about three times this year because everyone told me to put it on our registry. I have to admit, I am going to be a teensy bit sad if we don’t end up getting this from someone.

The last thing that I really wanted to register for was silver. I know that this isn’t on many people’s registries anymore, but I love the idea of having a set of silver to use on special occasions (or even on those non-special days when you just want to make your table a little prettier). I’ve always loved my mom’s set, and I just assumed that we’d add silver to our registry and see if anyone wanted to give us some. Unfortunately, I nearly keeled over in shock when I realized just how expensive silver patterns are these days. Some of the patterns are $400 for a four-piece setting! There was no way that I could ask someone to shell out nearly $100 per fork for me. Even though I know that registries are just suggestions and that you aren’t actually asking anyone to buy anything for you, people still judge. And I had already questioned adding some of the $100 pots to our registry, so no way was $400 silver being added.

But after we got back, I was talking to my mom, and I told her that as I was looking at silver patterns, my favorite one was Joan of Arc:

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Her reaction? “That’s MY pattern!” I just had to start laughing—one of the reasons that I liked it was that it looked similar to hers, but I had no idea I had managed to pick exactly her pattern out of the thousands that are out there! Ultimately, we decided to add a link to a site that sold that pattern on our Amazon registry. I’m a little concerned about coming across as greedy for wanting something that’s so expensive, but on the other hand, silver is a pretty standard registry addition, so maybe people won’t think twice about it?

I also wanted to add in a few tips that I learned from our registry experience:

1. Don’t go on an empty stomach. I am not a happy person when I am hungry. I wasn’t hungry when we left, but wow was I starving about halfway through. We didn’t even end up going to Crate and Barrel because I was about ready to eat the first thing I saw (which would have been the plastic food on the table displays). It’s much more fun for both of you if you are calm and relaxed rather than wondering if your stomach will actually eat itself if you don’t give it food.

2. Leave plenty of time for wandering the store. More accurately, don’t go at 12:30 on a Sunday when your football team is playing at 1:30 and think that you’ll actually have enough time to go to two different stores, finish your registries, and even have time for food in there. Yeah, so not going to happen. This was another reason we didn’t go to Crate and Barrel after we were done at Macy’s. Luckily, we got to see the second half, and the Seahawks beat the Cardinals. Go Hawks!

3. Listen to what your partner wants. There were some things that I didn’t particularly care about. For example, I didn’t really think about getting nice glasses. We already have nice everyday drinking glasses, and our wine glasses are Riedel, so we were just going to register for more of those. So I didn’t think we needed to look at that section. But Mr. EB really wanted to register for some nice highball glasses. We both made a conscious effort to make sure that we were listening to each other about what we wanted to add to the list.

4. Wander the store by yourselves. I’m so happy that all of the consultants were busy with other people when we went in. We already had a pretty good idea of what we wanted, so I was really glad that we didn’t have someone following us the whole time.

5. But if you have questions, ask! We didn’t have a lot of questions during the process, but it was nice to know that someone was there if we were confused about anything. Plus they did have some nice completion deals and other random gifts (like a free lip gloss from Clinique), so it did pay to listen to them when they were talking about all of the extras that go along with registering.

6. Remember that nothing is permanent; you can always change it later! I think this was the reason that I stayed so calm about the process. We didn’t have to figure out how to get the five-piece place setting scanned with the weird little scanner (or sit there and scan every piece individually). We could just scan one of the plates and know that we could go back and change it online later. So easy!

7. If you love it, add it. This tip came from a friend who commented on my personal blog, and it’s something that I agree with completely, yet had a hard time actually following. I do wonder if people will judge me based on what we add to our registry, but as I thought about it more, I realized that most of what we registered for are pieces that will last for a really long time, if not our entire lives. It’s OK that we want quality, and it’s OK that these things cost a bit more. We made sure to add plenty of options in different price ranges and, ultimately, it doesn’t matter what other people think.

So there are my tips for a successful registry outing. Any other tips you would add?