If you have ever been in a department store when a bride is creating her bridal registry, you can quickly pick up on the buzz of excitement and anticipation she feels for “setting up house” in her married life. Most stores give brides-to-be those handy little devices that allow them to simply point and click on the SKU numbers of all the things they think they want. This makes picking out gifts almost too easy and, even worse, enables the bride-to-be to haphazardly include tons of useless gadgets for every room in the house. When you stand back and think reasonably, the whole thing seems just ridiculous.
If you are a bride-to-be, then obviously, you want to pick things out for your home. At the same time, you have to realize that choosing fine china just because it’s new and shiny, when you have perfectly fine dishes at home, is sort of a waste. How often do you plan to entertain? If you pick out every small appliance known to man, will you have room in your home to store it all, or will it sit in boxes cluttering up the garage? Is new silverware, sheets, towels, and a wine cooler really going to make your marriage that much more comfortable? Brides should be considerate when making their bridal registries, keeping in mind that other people will be paying for this often-senseless shopping spree. In the end, they will be left with all the stuff to shuffle around. It stands to reason that choosing wisely and being as economical and thrifty with other people’s money as you would be with your own is something that should be done in good conscience.
Think Before You Register
If you are making your bridal registry, make sure to do it with your groom-to-be as well. Go for things that can be bought in sets and try to avoid picking out the most expensive items just because they are brand-name or top of the line. By all means, if you already have a mixer and a can opener, don’t put another one on the list just for the sake of having something less expensive for people to choose from. Even though the football-shaped crockpot cheese dip cooker is a novel and fun idea, you, like millions of others who put it on their registry, will NOT use it! Think about what you need for your life ahead and make things as simple for yourself as you can. So many brides talk about being embarrassed at their bridal showers with such lavish gifts and the truckloads of stuff that they have to have carted off when it’s over. Does anyone really need that much stuff? The worst part is they are the ones who picked it all out! The people in the store, who are helping you with their sweet and encouraging voices, are schemers simply trying to turn a profit for their store. A bridal registry would be much more useful if, instead of being walked through Crate and Barrel with a sales/wedding consultant, you were walked through Wal-Mart with a wife and mother of three kids. She’s the one who could really help you get what you need for married life! Your registry would be stuffed with huge stocks of toilet paper, paper plates for those nights you don’t want to cook, trash bags, and laundry detergent. Not romantic, but useful nonetheless.
The tradition of bridal registries originated decades ago when couples getting married were literally moving from the home they grew up in to a modest new home with their partner. These couples had nothing but hand-me-down furniture and tattered towels and were bestowed silverware and grandma’s pots and pans so they could prepare meals together. With such modest beginnings, couples learned to work together and look forward to gathering the things they wanted for their life together. Most importantly, they learned to get by with less and be grateful for what they did have. This gave them time to focus on one another and the building of a life that should be marriage. Nowadays, many couples have already set up house elsewhere and already have ample things to fill at least one new house together (if not two or three). A bride-to-be feels neglected if she is forced to move into a used home without a dishwasher and just one bathroom. It’s obvious that necessity and desire have somehow become combined in the eyes of most new couples.
The irony is that today, all these marriages, who have so much stuff, fail miserably in comparison to those marriages that started out with nothing! Food for thought, at least. Bridal registries can be a great way to give you and your partner a jump-start in life. You can begin to acquire things as a couple that will lend a hand in your marriage and home, but it shouldn’t be an excuse to impulse shop or act like a spoiled prima donna who can’t bear the thought of life without a KitchenAid mixer. After all, how many 12-egg pound cakes do you really plan on baking?
The last thing to consider before you make your bridal registry is the underlying tone that you are setting for your marriage. There is an insightful school of wisdom that believes the acquiring and hoarding of stuff in our lives is an unhealthy habit that displays our lack of security and trust in our own future. We think in terms of “one day we will need this,” or “one day we will want that,” or “one day this will come in handy”—with the unfaithful assumption that when “one day” comes, if we don’t get it now, we won’t have everything we need. The same is true for having a garage full of boxed-up gifts you never use, but just can’t bring yourself to pass on or return to the store. The wisdom of thought proceeds to indicate that by holding on to everything and storing useless things in our garages, homes, cars, cabinets, or even our minds, we are not leaving any space for the things we truly need in life. We are not leaving space for our future. Somehow, it should become apparent to brides-to-be that when it comes to bridal registries, less really is more!
