Our Day. Our Dreams. Our Registry. Or On Registries

Disclaimer: [I hate disclaimers! It makes the writer/speaker seem weak and backbone-less and waffle-ly.] All of my best friends have registries. I realize they're almost necessary in this [morally bankrupt] day and age. I'm not asking anyone to get rid of them [that's clearly false], just to acknowledge that they are an atrocity.

As an acquaintance lately reminded me, "It's bridal season." Weddings, bridal showers, bridesmaid dresses and bridal registries are really the only interesting thing in my life at the moment. Several of these things are deeply flawed. One of them I will whine about here/now.

Registries take the interest, thought, and care out of gift giving. In a way, registries are the refusal of a gift. They demand something that is perfectly chosen to match the other things in their house. They demand the specific desired gift. They make the giver uninteresting and unimportant except monetarily. My mother tells me about her wedding gifts--the china set from my great grandmother, the salt and pepper shakers from a friend who said they would be stained in time with use from the oils of our hands (they are), the pottery bowl that holds odds and ends on top of the fridge, the sampler cross stitched by my aunt. What is absolutely uninteresting is the person who bought her the glasses that broke 10 years ago.

Furthermore, registries prevent you from sharing something of yourself with the person you're giving a gift to--you can't pick out the crock pot (gift I'm getting for a May wedding) that you've had great success with over the years (not that I've ever actually used a crock pot, but I might this week), you have to pick the brand that they selected. The Target slogan that I used to title this post is indicative of the self-centeredness that can be involved in registries--we want things our way.

Perhaps this is all connected to paying too much for weddings so that you feel that you must give a really grand [read: expensive] wedding gift. I don't know. And now Target has baby registries. Unbelievable--where is the fun, the spontaneity, the unexpectedness of gifts? A wedding gift, like the eros that it celebrates, should be defined by the surprise involved. Goodness gracious, I've been invited to parties for single friends, which were essentially a chance for them to register for whatever they want and have me buy it for them. It seems to me that this misses the humility with which one ought to receive gifts. And precludes all of the fun in opening them.