Weddingbee Blog

So, I kinda feel like I have been holding out on you, Hive. Mr. Aardvark and I registered AGES ago. I was convinced that we needed to do it RIGHT AWAY, so in the late summer we decided to get to it. Turns out the registry’s sat unused for a few months, until Christmas. But since then my obsessive occasional checking has shown me that items are being plucked off right and left! As someone who never made birthday or Christmas lists as a child, this seems new to me. Mr. Aardvark has given me a hard time for peeking, but I figure if we already know what we’re getting… what’s the harm in it?

Image by yours truly

You may be asking yourself, “What are they getting? And from where?”

Well, the where part was easy. In our little town there are not many choices. We wanted to be able to go in-store, and also let people shop online if they wanted. Kohls seem like an easy answer. Everyone (pretty much) coming to the wedding had a Kohl’s nearby. We also wanted a bit of a “higher end” option, although after looking we realized they had all the same housewares at both.

Our local department store is a Boston Store. Now, I had never heard of Boston store until we lived in our current town, so I was worried no one would know what it was. As it turns out, it is part of the Bon-Ton group of stores that includes Yonkers, Elder Bearman, Herbergers, and others. If you go into any of the Bon-Ton stores (or websites) you can find our registry. I figured this would make it easy peasy for our guests. I figured wrong. I have had to explain the “Bon-ton” group of stores thing about a bazillion times because I could not think of clear enough wording on our website. Oh well!

We were also this close to registering at Fleet Farm. (I’m not even kidding.) But, they did not offer an online option so we crossed it off the list. Two stores would have to do.

Now for the what to register for question, we had to use our noggins a bit more. We both have lots of…stuff. Most of it is mismatchy, collegey, or hand-me-downs. Some of it we love and would never dream of replacing, but some of it we for sure wanted to upgrade. (Matching towels, anyone?) While we don’t plan on staying in our current apartment forever, we have to live there for now and we don’t want our neighbors submitting us for an episode of Hoarders. We had to be selective.

I knew we wanted dishes. Mr Aardvark has a nice set of dishes, but they don’t all match and they don’t have much sass. I knew right away what we (I) wanted to replace them with…

FIESTAWARE! I heart Fiestaware. SOOO much. The colors are what do me in every time. All the colors. Together. Two of each!

Image from Homer Laughlin

 Sadly, Mr. A reminded me that we would have no room for 30 place settings. In fact, even one of each was not an option. Reality check time: we don’t even have a kitchen table, let alone a dining room. So sad.

With the cold harsh reality sinking in, I realized we would have to make cuts. I really wanted settings for eight because, by gosh, someday, we will have a dining room and I wanted to be able to host at least eight people with matching dishes. We decided four colors would be the way to go. After arranging and rearranging saucers on the in-store display to see what looked best together, we had our final four.

Image from Homer Laughlin

 The colors are Marigold, Cobalt, Peacock and Paprika. In the picture the Cobalt looks a lot darker than it is in real life. Because I couldn’t walk away from that spectrum of beautiful colors with only 4, we decided that all of our serving pieces would be Ivory. I adore the way this all looks! We have already gotten a few pieces and it has been so much fun putting them in our cabinets!

With space being such a crunch, we did not register for “fine” china at all. Aside from the fact  that we are only a little bit fancy at best, and we are short on space, My family has some pretty significant collections of china that may be passed down to me someday so I did not want to crowd that out.

Of course we didn’t register for only dishes! We asked for all kinds of utensils and doodad upgrades for our kitchen, a super vacuum for the cat our apartment, towels, and really soft sheets. But we made sure to only put things we knew we would use on there.

Before the shower I was told that I have too many and too few items on there. We have received a number of off-registry gifts, which we love, and a few duplicate items. I have a sneaking suspicion a group of great-aunts got together, and picked a crystal pattern for me because I have gotten a few bowls and candlesticks that are all very fancy and all match. (If you did not guess this earlier, we did not register for crystal.) I have come to the conclusion that there is no really right way to do a registry.

That is not to say it is wrong to register, but nothing will ever go perfectly and I think it’s best just to roll with it. I have no intention of adding or removing anything from the registry at this time. I will keep and treasure our newfound crystal pieces (look who just got fancier!). I will get rid of old to make way for the new. But most importantly, I will be grateful that people are willing to buy us stuff at all.

Are you a registry peeker? And what is your favorite color Fiestaware?