(Okay, micies, here is part two of LPC's guest post on registering for wedding gifts. It's good stuff, boy howdy. Check out her blog for more delicious stories of far-off lands and privileged people--and if anyone dresses like one of those Aquavit faries next Halloween and sends me a photo, there will be a prize of some kind.)Hello mice. LPC back again, this time with some practical recommendations on table setting.

You will want to think about registering in tiers. Kind of like those food pyramids they keep changing around. First, make sure that what you use every day makes you happy, meets your needs, and reminds you of who you are. Next, if there are still more resources in your world of present-givers, register for the second tier, for fancy, for china and silver and glass that by their very presence indicate a celebration. If entire china sets aren't in your cards, serving dishes, or tablecloths, or candlesticks, work very well. Finally, if there are, um, abundant, resources available to you, register for the third tier. The stuff you bring out when the ambassador comes to dinner. Generally recognizable by the amount of gilding and degree of sparkle.

The World of Plates, and Their Friends

Every Day
Clearly, you need large plates. It would be difficult to find anyone to debate that point. Not so clearly, you will also need salad plates. These will be used more for things like morning toast and little sandwiches than for salad. (Most people I know eat salad on their dinner plates. Even, tell no one, at the Same Time as their dinner.) Cereal bowls are also crucial. Because America appears now to live on cereal. Use those for soup too. Most people hate rimmed flat soup bowls. No matter how lovely. Nothing but an occasion to remember that you are supposed to swipe the spoon AWAY from your body. Oh, and don't blow to cool. Depending on your budget, big bowls for noodles from many cultures (pasta, ramen, soup noodles) are repeatedly useful. Bistro bowls serve the same purpose. 8 inches vs. 6 inches. It's more luxurious to have plain bowls in three perfect sizes than fancy bowls which don't suit your habits.

Get the cups most appropriate to what you really drink hot. If you drink espresso, go for demitasses and let the usual motley assortment of sloganed mugs collect in your cupboards for everything else. If you drink coffee American-style, or tea, register for mugs. I love mine. Keeps my hands warm early in the morning when I write.What style? This is up to you. However, I will put in my $0.02. You can't go wrong with white. White plates are a table's equivalent of The Little Black Dress. Do not worry that you are boring. Your wedding is not an occasion solely for other people's amusement. White plates mean,

• People can bring extras when you lose your mind and decide to have 24 people over for dinner without a paper plate in sight.
• If they discontinue the line, just mix and match when something breaks. Do that now anyway.
• When you want to fancy up, glorious napkins and gilded bowls will suffice. Or just a whole lot of candlelight.

And they come in many forms. Like this, or this, or this.

An Occasion

For celebrations, High WASPs are prone to Meissen, to banding, to nautical motifs. This is not required. We are also apt to wind up with incidental fancy china, as in, "Can you come and take this out of my garage?" Hence green plates featuring flowers. If you like the effect of garage heirlooms, you can recreate it for yourself by registering on the web for vintage china. Or just tell everyone a color and motif. It's quite astonishing, the number of peaches that have been painted onto plates over the years. The greens don't have to match. Just watch for lead. Nasty thing, lead.I have never drunk even one sip from these. But they look cool in my cupboard.

The Ambassador

If you will be giving really, really, really, fancy parties, well then. Bring on the gilt. For these occasions, you're probably back in the world of flat soup bowls too. My condolences.My mother bought this set for me from the Silver Vaults in England. She called it a bargain. These things are relative.

Forks, Spoons, and Knives
Again, think tiers. Start with good stainless, like Christofle, or more reasonably, Crate and Barrel. Silver, if you don't mind polishing it occasionally, can substitute. Think weighty. Aim for 10 settings. 5 will be in the dishwasher much of the time. And get extra teaspoons. They are always getting lost, heading down the dispose-all, disappearing into someone's literal or metaphorical sandbox.

If you have the lifestyle and budget, get both silver and stainless. (High WASPs prefer their silver either exquisitely plain, or dignifiedly fancy.) If you eat a lot of Asian food, now is a great opportunity to get some good quality chopsticks, too. Nice wood, no silver. Polishing silver that has wood attached is, frankly, a pain in the neck. Leading to chemical detritus of unknown makeup. Don't do it.

Glasses
If you are a wine lover go ahead and register for red and white Riedel glasses. The rest of us should go to Crate and Barrel, or Target for that matter, and register for 12 of red and white glasses of any sort we like. Don't get the tall ones, they won't fit into the dishwasher and you don't want to be washing wine glasses at 2am. Or 10am. Wait, 12? 12? Why twelve? Because these things break, people. They are glass, after all. I do recommend registering for the nicest ones in your price range. It feels good to sit at a table with pretty glass in hand.

Then, while you are at it, get 12 tall and 12 short bar glasses. Don't fuss too much about juice glasses vs. lowball glasses or all that. Just 12 tall in case you want to drink a lot of a given liquid, 12 short in case you want just a little bit. Grapefruit juice comes to mind. Unless, again, you have parties with CEOs or diplomats or admirals. As my mother did, when she lived in Sweden. I believe they had special glasses for Aquavit. Her favorite story is about the Russian Ambassador. But I don't think he's available from Williams Sonoma.

Textiles and Other Woven Things For Tables
You may want tablecloths for Thanksgiving, Christmas, Passover, or other food-centric holidays. Table mats are sensible for the rest of life. Straw is better - wash the cloth ones and they always wind up looking as though you are setting the table with old dishtowels. Get cloth napkins. Which can be as big as your head. Go crazy. Make sure they are heavy, wrinkle-resistant material because otherwise you will find yourself ironing napkins some day, singing the Talking Heads, "Same As It Ever Was," under your breath.

When I was 3 we went to dinner at my father's mother's Park Avenue apartment. It was 1959. Modern women had discovered paper napkins. So, when my mother said, "Lisa, dear, use your napkin," I replied, "Mommy, there is no napkin. There's just this big piece of cloth." I have also been told I played with the finger bowls. While that story is probably apocryphal, everything else is as true as I can make it. Congratulations on your engagements. And if you have ever heard the superstition that brides shouldn't be congratulated, impunity. Impunity, my friends.

BTW, places like Macy's can tell you the difference between porcelain and stoneware. Which isn't a bad thing to know. But they may try to make you buy cups and saucers. Consider yourselves warned.