To Register or Not To Register?

Registering for gifts is one of the strangest customs I have encountered during our engagement. For the first time in your life you get to tell all your friends and family, "buy me things!" and you don't even have to be ashamed about it. What's more, you get to tell them exactly what to get you so they don't even have the excuse that they just weren't sure what you needed. AND you get to run around department stores with little price zappers in some deranged grown-up version of laser tag. So what's not to love?

The downside is this: as with all great privileges, this can be abused. Sean and I, in addition to Target and Crate & Barrel, also opened a registry on Amazon.com for the express purpose of using their Universal Wishlist feature. That means nothing is off limits for your registry. Maybe you want to register for that one-of-a-kind wine opener hewn from ancient acacia trees and blessed by a shaman but it's only sold on some obscure import enthusiast site. Thanks to this feature, that's not a problem. You can rope in any items from any site and compile them into a registry on Amazon. This opens a world of possibilities, but in the words of Solomon, an increase in knowledge is an increase in sorrows. No sooner had I started poking around the internet for cool, one-of-a-kind items to add to our registry than I realized that this feature made it really easy to go overboard. I've seen plenty of couples get married and register for items they use once and then it becomes another thing that takes up space. I'm sure Sean and I's first place won't be Versailles, and whatever space we have we'll need to use economically.

Still, it's hard to hold back on some of this stuff, so I've compiled a list of my Top Ten Things I Wish I Could Register For, just to get them off my chest. Some things got the boot because they were too impractical or too expensive or the fatal combination of both. Seriously, what good would it be to have a historically accurate working Gramophone if you have no plates to eat dinner off of while you listen? Better to stick with the necessary objects, I say. Also, some items snuck their way in because they were just selfish wishes: things I'm not sure register etiquette allows for, I just don't have the funds to buy them for myself. Finally, the most difficult to veto were things like rugs and furniture that belong on a registry, we just don't know where we'll be and if those things will fit wherever we end up. But hey, maybe I'm being too practical. Anything on here you think I really should put on the registry? I'm standing by...

My Top Ten Things I Wish I Could Register For:

1. Swallow Mobile/$130

2. Gramophone/$187

3. Dandelion Rug/$1,082

4. Subscription to Real Simple/$24

5. Artichoke Book Pages Paper Lantern/$30

6. Churchill Leather Reading Chair/$2295

7. McSweeny's Postcards/$14

8. J.Crew Swimsuit/$88

9. Floral Lampshade/$98

10. Forest Wallpaper/$180