How I Planned Your Wedding (12 page)

A
h, the wedding registry. This was easily my favorite part of the wedding planning journey. Picture the scene: You think about your life with your husband, all the family dinners to come, the lazy Saturday mornings spent in bed, the swanky cocktail parties you’ll host for your friends…and you pick out the objects that will populate those dreams. You drool over crystal candlesticks, paper-thin champagne flutes and espresso machines that mean you’ll never have to leave your home for a good latte. You convince your frugal, practical soul mate that, yes, you do need sterling silver butter knives and you can’t live without a $200 stainless steel Nambé candy bowl. So you make a list of all the things you want for your home. You put things on there that you would never dream of buying for yourself, because even though you just got a pay raise, you can’t see your way to spending four hundred bucks on a down comforter. But then, magically, all the stuff you asked for starts showing up on your doorstep.

First, a note on having a registry at all: when we started to create ours, Dave hated the whole process. “It feels so acquisitiiiive,” he would whine as I pawed like a nesting hamster through Egyptian cotton bath towels. After stopping to look up the meaning of the word “acquisitive,” I sat him down and had a Big Talk. It went a little something like this:

“Yes, having a wedding registry takes the surprise and fun out of the gifts we receive. But our guests will be getting us gifts, whether
we register or not, so would you rather have eight potato peelers, or one peeler and sheets for our bed? Our guests will prefer being able to select something from a list, too, instead of hoping we like what they’ve chosen. Plus, do you REMEMBER the Beanie Baby collection that Cousin Perdinella
^*
gave us for Christmas?”

BAM! My little “We need a registry” speech worked like a charm.

Uncle Ben, Spider-Man’s doomed father figure, said, “With great power comes great responsibility.” Maybe he was talking about his nephew’s newly acquired spidey sense, but he could just as well have said that to a new bride. You see, as a bride, you’re now endowed with a mystical bridey power that attracts others to you, enticing them to throw you parties, compliment your figure and give you presents.

However, you won’t hold onto this power for long if you take it for granted.

The wedding registry is the most tangible place you’ll see this balance played out. As soon as you go live with your engagement—meaning that once you start to tell people about it—you’re going to begin receiving gifts. And as soon as you get your first, ahem, lame present (matching his and hers toilet doilies, anyone?), you’ll start your gift registry. Next thing you know, all the loot you picked out and put on your list will begin to arrive in giant, bubble-wrapping-filled packages. Sounds good, right? It’s better than good—it’s totally flippin’ awesome!—until you mess up and forget to write a thank-you note. And, friends, nine out of ten of you will mess up.

I always fancied myself a great thank-you note writer. I went as far as prewriting my thank-you notes, leaving two lines blank for personalization, before parties and job interviews. But I wasn’t ready for the flood of unexpected gifts that arrived on my doorstep following the engagement party my mom threw for us.

Among the registry presents I received, there was a set of four place settings from my mom’s friend, Venita, who also happened to be
the wife of my high school principal. Given her elevated status in my life, you’d think that I would have written a perfectly ruled, gushingly thankful note—especially considering that until we got her gift, Dave and I ate our meals off plastic plates. Additionally, we had just moved to Chicago and Venita was one of the few people to realize that it would be much more convenient for us if she sent our gift ahead to our new address so that we didn’t have to move it across the country.

She was pretty much the best, most generous gifter we had come across yet.

And it’s not like I didn’t think about writing a thank-you note. Every week or so, I would realize that I still hadn’t sent one and would mentally castigate myself for my rudeness…and then I would go make a bag of microwave popcorn and spend two hours watching
The Real Housewives of Orange County.

Weeks passed. We used our new dishes every night, and slowly I began to forget that I had never thanked Venita for her generous gift.

One afternoon, my mom forwarded an email from Venita titled “Awkward question.” Above the forwarded message, Mommy had written “SEND HER THANK YOU NOTE NOWWWWWWWWWWWWWW.”

My stomach flipped. I could feel my cheeks flush hot, then go cold and tingly as I read the message Venita had written:

I guiltily looked down at the beautiful white porcelain plate on the desk next to me, adorned with crumbs from the sandwich I’d made for lunch. I imagined that I could see the plate glaring accusingly at me. I felt like a thief—and in the wedding world, I
was.
See, you don’t get your wedding gifts for free. Instead, you pay for them with gratitude, smiles and acknowledgment. Since these commodities don’t cost you any money, you’re pretty much a bad person if you neglect to fork over the goods.

I spent the next hour crafting my reply, forcing Dave and my mother to edit and reedit multiple drafts.

As soon as the email was sent, I scrambled to hand-write a thank-you note as well. That’s the other thing about thanking people for the gifts you receive: go hand-written or go home. I went rogue and sent an email in the Venita situation because it was more important to let her know as soon as possible that I’d gotten her gift, but I wasn’t about to gyp her out of the one thing she could expect in return for her generosity.

I haven’t been late on a thank-you note since. In fact, Dave and I instituted a rule after the whole embarrassing situation with Venita: no using the new gift until we write a thank-you note for it. After the honeymoon, when we came home to a mountain of boxes, we wrote our notes as we opened each package. I suggest you do the same, or endure the epic, traumatic guilt you will experience when your generous friends have to ask about the gift they sent you when they never heard whether you received it.

SHOWERED IN LOVE

Ah, the bridal shower. Dreaded by some, eagerly anticipated by others, it can be one of the more polarizing experiences of the wedding planning process. I was one of those brides who couldn’t WAIT for my bridal shower—I was excited for the ribbon bouquet, the wrapping paper dress, the themed menus. The wedding gods must have known this, because I had not one, but two bridal showers thrown for me. The first was a surprise shower put on by Dave’s mom at her home in Vancouver, Canada. She lured me there with a story about celebrating Dave’s birthday as a family, but when I walked in the door, I was greeted by a roomful of Dave’s female relatives, two of my bridesmaids, my mom and an opera-singing chef named Pepe.

The theme of the shower was cooking and baking, and as Pepe sang and taught us how to prepare a beautiful Italian meal, I unwrapped gorgeous copper pans and glass nesting bowls.

I have a theory about why many women dread their own bridal showers: first, it’s a little bit awkward to sit in a roomful of people as they watch you open gifts. Sure, it was fun when you turned seven at Chuck E. Cheese’s, but we’re adults now and have become accustomed to receiving most gifts in the mail after they’ve been purchased online by our other adult friends. Second, and worse, your bridal shower is likely thrown by your mother or future mother-in-law—meaning that you won’t know every single person there. So, ultimately, you’re sitting in a circle of people, many of whom you don’t know, opening a pile of gifts they’ve given you and trying to act grateful when you’re not even entirely sure which one is Bitsy from your mom’s aerobics class and which one is Delilah from her book club.

Well, I developed a little trick for faking it through a party where you probably won’t know everyone’s name: first, you sloooowly open the attached card, keeping a discreet eye out for anyone whispering, “This one’s from me!” to her neighbor. Then, look at the name at the bottom of the card. Keeping your eyes on the card, say, “What a gorgeous
note, Drusilla!” Now this is the crucial moment. Pretend you’re still reading the rest of the note she wrote, when in reality you’re waiting for Drusilla to respond to your compliment. BINGO! As soon as she says, “You’re welcome,” or “Oh, dear, I found that at the Dollar Store,” look up and smile at her, then rip into the wrapping paper.

One potential mishap: If Drusilla is too busy sucking down her mimosa, she might not respond to your comment about her card. In these rare cases, look around dazedly at the circle of women and say, “Now where’s Drusilla? I don’t see her…” and when she waves or someone points her out to you, say, “Ah! I thought you were on the other side of the room!”

Of course, knowing this method, you could save yourself a lot of anxiety by asking the host of your shower to discreetly nod in the direction of each gift-giver as you read her name from the card. Or you could ask your hostess to provide nametags or play some sort of name game with your guests, but you should make sure you’ve got a backup plan in the event that your menopausal hostess’s house is colder than a meat locker and all the guests put on cardigans that cover their “Hi, My name is…” badges.

And if all else fails, force yourself to tear up. They’ll forgive you for anything if you play the part of the emotional bride well.

SUSAN

Don’t get me started on bridal shower etiquette. I made the mistake of consulting some wedding books, reading the rules and regs of giving and receiving until my eyes glazed over. And then I did it my way. Well, my and Sheila’s way, to be honest. Sheila is the go-to BFF we all need in our lives, the one with the big smile, the big laugh and the can-do attitude. We put our heads together and planned the silliest bridal shower
our fevered minds could conjure up.

We kept it simple, ensuring that no one’s eyes would glaze over. The invited guests—women I’ve known and loved for years—received an email invitation, with the time (a flawlessly sunny Pacific Northwest summer afternoon), the place (my patio), links to the gift registry and a promise to award a prize to the most creatively wrapped parcel. And then we called a caterer. We’re nutty, but not stupid. Nobody wants to run around cutting cucumbers into little flower shapes when we could be sitting on the patio, sipping a kir royale. Or better yet—the signature cocktail Sheila named especially for the event: The Pink Wiggs. Get a jar of hibiscus flowers in syrup (yes, these do exist), place a flower in a champagne flute and cover it with your favorite bubbly. Done!

The gang showed up in force, we played games, we ate and drank, we oohed and aahed over presents. At the very end, Canadian Dave showed up and I paraded him around like a Great Dane at the Westminster Dog Show, to wild applause. By this point, he was resigned to the idea of being my son-in-law, and all that entails.

As for me, what on earth did I want to give my daughter as a wedding gift? A place setting that looks like the other eleven place settings she signed up for? Couch pillows or a fancy duvet cover? A kitchen appliance? Sorry, no.

I’m a big believer in letting the universe hand you what you need. When it comes to picking out the perfect gift to give your daughter on the occasion of her wedding, it behooves you to pay attention to the world around you. As the bride’s parents, you want to give them a grand gift. Something memorable and personal. Something they’ll treasure all their lives. You want to give them something that celebrates who they are and all your hopes and dreams for them…but at the same time, doesn’t burden them with an object that’s going to be a pain as they cart it with them, albatross-like, through life. So what, after childhood, graduations, all those holidays and birthdays, is left to give her?