Every day, Bunny and I reference the fact that we are getting married. It's not uncommon for the last thing one of use says at night to be "I can't wait to marry you." Regularly we speak of the shape of our future marriage, our dreams and plans, the values we want enacted in it. We talk marriage a lot.
What we don't talk about so often is the wedding. The day itself, or all the associated planning. Which, to be fair, we are rather laissez-faire about to begin with. Ours will be a very lazily planned wedding. Beyond the people, the place, the officiant, and license (oh yeah, the food and dress deserve a mention) I really don't care about the wedding "stuff".
I'm getting married. The details just don't matter.
We do, though, talk about the wedding and wedding related things. If we didn't, the wedding would never happen. These conversations go differently, though. More in fits and starts, a little bit of this and a little bit of that, before retreating to safer ground of I want to spend my life married to you. That part's easy to talk about.
Lately, the wedding topic that has been coming up has been the registry. Everyone tells us how important it is, how we should put this, that or the other on it, or when we want to buy something they say "Just register for it." So we will register, because some of our closest friends have made it very clear that they want that, and I think the registry exists as much for our guests as for us. I need a moment though, to say it feels crazy to create a registry for our tiny wedding.
But now we're left with a big question. What the heck do we put on our registry? Neither Bunny nor I have any desire to fill my cupboards with fine china or crystal. All that fancy stuff, beautiful though it may be, doesn't fit into the life we live, and it doesn't fit in to the life we're planning together. Everyday dishes, glassware and cutlery in fun, clean patterns though? That suits us a lot, and I'd be happy to use them for the next twenty years.
Bunny, bless his heart, has thought about it too, and has ideas of his own. Ideas that get into the fact that a registry is about basics. He`d like to ask for new sheets and duvet covers, maybe even pillows. After he suggested that it was simple enough to consider that hey, we`ve been wanting a couple of nice floor lamps (for living room and offices purposes) since we moved into the new place. The sort of classic lamps that we can (again) use for the next twenty years.
After about ten or fifteen minutes talking about the registry, the conversation took its natural course. We danced our way back to other topics, topics that don`t make us so uncomfortable, topics we care more about as a general rule. Motorcycles and engines, or the book I`ve been reading. What`s for dinner? And of course, our favourite: Hey, we're getting married!
How cool is that?
Found your blog through eatthedamncake! I felt the same way about the registry. My husband and I got married in a small ceremony last summer and had only created a registry because the people attending our wedding (family and very close friends) asked us to. We did not register for china or crystal but are thrilled with the basics that we did receive and will continue to use for many years to come.
ReplyDeleteHi! Glad to have you here!
DeleteI've definitely come to the realization the the registry exists more for the guests than for us, which came as something of a surprise to me. I'm definitely warming up to it though, and the focus turning to basics has helped.
Looking back, is there anything you wish you'd added to or taken off the registry?