(Know what? I don't know anything at all about what He-Mouse and I ought to register for. I mean, we live together and we have some nice things (a serviceable toaster, a cast-iron skillet), but we're still getting on our feet, financially. So we do not have, for instance, glasses that match. For some reason, we have only six teaspoons of our ten place-setting Target silverware. I have no idea where the others have gone. Anyway, I decided to seek some help with registering, and who better to ask than the High WASP herself? She comes from the land of owning china and silver, after all. So here is LPC from A Midlife of Privilege, with the first of two posts on registering. Come back next Wednesday for part two!)
Table Impunity by High WASP on Polyvore.com
Hello little mice. LPC here, also known as Lisa, from Privilege. Our dear Souris has asked me to come and say silly things about wedding registries. In fact, she asked me to tell you what I know, but all I know are silly things. Which are often about what one needs to have to set one's table.
Alors.
The native fun of registering for wedding presents can swiftly devolve into confusion, or even distress. This is largely because people are apt to Have Opinions. Which they will want to tell you. I unfortunately cannot help with statements like "Purple is a horror," or "Yes, I do want a flat screen TV bigger than your car." I can help with opinions like, "You MUST have formal china," or, "But dear, that is not the Done Thing," or, "Everyone always registers for crystal." Because High WASPs (my culture of origin) invented the Done Thing, and, although disappearing from earth in alarming numbers, we stand on our authority in the world of china, glass, and silver.
The debate about table-centric wedding registries usually pits acquiring objects of social significance against furnishing the life you actually lead. Pressure to register for fancy stuff, if any, will most likely come from family members who worry about propriety. Or who want to use your wedding for a statement of wealth. A modern version of a dowry. You do not need to comply. Impunity. That's how High WASPs do it. The Sturdy Gal says, "Oh rubbish. The silliest thing I have ever heard." No matter what anyone says, at whatever decibel level, there's no right or wrong, even in the High WASP canon. And if anyone was going to obsess about virtue in table settings, it's us.
Yes, society has decreed that a chunk of financial resources will come your way when you get married. If you want to use those resources to buy gold plates to keep your cupboard company, go right ahead. If you want to use those resources for something to eat off of every day, go right ahead.
That said, I recommend you furnish the life you will lead. Rather than collect goods. Life is short. We have to eat, and over the years you will be putting a lot of food into your mouth. With any luck people you love will be eating with you. Maybe around a table, maybe at a kitchen counter. Buy plates for those moments. Imagine where those plates will be kept, where they will be used, how on earth they will get cleaned. Same goes for glasses, forks and knives, table mats.* Household good have lives. The lives you give them.
You are not registering for objects. You are registering for use. Not stuff, but the backdrop to memories you will look back on down the decades. I know. Time. Your family. The values you will work so hard to establish and pass down to children, if you have them. It happens while we eat.
So just think, for a moment, about these little things.
1.) the life you will lead in the next 10 years (We don't buy stocks and bonds with much longer than a 10 year horizon, why china?)
2) an aesthetic that brings you joy (classic? artsy? regal? culturally-referent?)
3) what sort of budget your present givers can sustain (make sure everyone can find something on the list that will let them feel the glow of good present-giving)
Understand your philosophy, if you will. Only then go shopping. Perhaps you knew all this already. "Shopping for what?" you might ask. "Pretty things that serve you well," I would answer. With more specific advice to follow.
*And by the way, reclaim the vocabulary. Do not let anyone tell you have to call this stuff barware, or tableware, or flatware, or even silverware. If you want to call a fork a fork, do so. Commercial euphemisms not required.























