Wedding Registry

Still more pre-wedding thoughts…

While registering for gifts is generally one of the best things about being married, I simply lack the requisite physical stamina it takes to endure a day at the department store. Thankfully, my wedding registry experience only lasted eight minutes. All I remember is the store being really hot. It was like being in a greenhouse, shopping for saunas. Within five minutes of being in the store, I was literally suffering from heat stroke. I couldn’t discern one chrome melonballer from the next due to the proliferation of sweat rolling down my brow. I desperately tried not to pass out, as my fiancé really wanted to hear my opinions on the desired handle color of the aforementioned melonballer. Obviously, very few men can withstand this grueling process, aside from the marathon runners and mountain climbers that like to build up their endurance by registering for flatware patterns at the Bon.

I could tell this experience was wearing on Jeannette too. She hadn’t anticipated that my opinions would not be based on the style of the items we were registering for, but rather, whether we needed them in the first place. For the same reason that my fiancé is not consulted in regards to what games are needed in our XBox library, I have no business deciding the color scheme of our potholders. And clearly, after the “Spoonrest Incident”, Jeannette had no desire to spend the afternoon justifying the presence of every crystal gravy boat and velvet throw pillow on our registry to a man with the cultural refinement of a Fear Factor contestant.

Of course, women see all of these items as absolute necessities. Every female in the universe is convinced they need an 84-piece place setting in the event the Pope, the Sultan of Brunei, and the cast of Friends all stop by for servings of ball-shaped pieces of melon. Thankfully, I have a solution…

Now, I rarely have ideas worthy of taking credit for, so here goes: The Sears registry. In all modesty, registering at Sears was possibly the greatest stroke of pragmatism I’ve ever had. Each item on the Sears registry is equally practical and manly, and it completely offsets the delicate house wares from the Bon. Selecting weedwackers and garden hoses from Sears have enabled us to do the impossible: Achieve gender equity within our gift registry. The only way to possibly improve on this idea would be to register at Home Depot, so that items like grass sod, chain-link fencing and lumber would also show up on the gift table at the wedding.

Maybe the only drawback to the registry process is the ridiculous amount of packing material that our gifts are wrapped in once they are shipped to us. I’m pretty certain that our wedding is single handedly supporting the entire Styrofoam peanut industry. By far, the Bon is the biggest offender, as they literally mummify their merchandise in Styrofoam peanuts and bubble wrap. I suppose that is a good thing, as the shipping department at the Bon handles our flatware as delicately as weapons-grade plutonium. One the other hand, there’s something truly wrong when live organs are shipped more haphazardly than the items on our registry.

Anyway, under these circumstances, a few gifts’ worth of obscene amounts of packing material can easily consume your home. Our house is completely overrun at this point, it’s almost as if the Styrofoam is somehow reproducing. In a moment of desperation, I actually suggested that Jeannette find some miscellaneous fabric and use the Styrofoam peanuts to make us some giant beanbag furniture (this is true). As you can see, we’ve clearly achieved a full-blown Styrofoam-related crisis at our house…

More to come…