Club Wedd

Over the last few weeks, Bill and I have had some rather repetitive "discussions" about the whole registering thing. As a young (for the next 26 days, at least) adult who has watched her fair share of friends get married and has purchased her fair share of shower gifts, I have developed a pasttime of registry stalking. I have even been known to go on some of the major registry websites and type in the names of people from my past who I have heard through the grapevine were getting married, just to see what they were registering for.

Bill is decidedly not a registry stalker. In fact, his view of registries is that they are sort of...um...the word I am looking for is not "tacky," but we will go with that. He has said on more than one occasion that it seems to be in poor taste to announce to your friends and family exactly what gifts you want them to buy for your special occasion. My rebuttal was the whole, "It's better than getting four toasters and six irons and then having to return a bunch of things," argument, and while he said he saw where I was coming from, he still wasn't big into the entire registry thing.

I did not let this detract from my excitement at all. My two best friends from high school have gotten married recently, and I remember thinking when they were registering (both at Target, just like me...we are addicted to that place!) that I could not wait to do that myself. As soon as I heard from them that their respective registries were in place, I started to stalk, stalk, stalk them, deciding on what I was going to buy for them at their various shower events (bathroom accessories and a toaster oven for one and some Fiestaware for the other). Did I want to go with a theme, or just one big gift? Did I want to go kitchen or bedroom? Bathroom or living room? I also entertained myself by regularly checking in on their registries to see what other people were buying. Oh, the TV trays! She will love those! More of her China! She will be so excited! I was living vicariously through my friends...and it was a lot of fun.

Well, Saturday was MY day. Bill and I got up early because, well, we always get up early, so sleep sometimes eludes us. I started out the day with some dishwasher duties and with the planting of some hostas in our front landscaping. Then, after getting ready for the day, we left the house to head to Target to try our own hand at picking out gifts for others to buy us. I am sure you can imagine how excited I was. I had spent the few days before preparing a little bit by checking out Target's selection on-line and comparing it to my handy Consumer Reports Buying Guide to make sure I was going for a quality product. I checked out the comments by other Target shoppers and their ratings to make sure that other people liked what they were getting. And in the end, I made a bulleted list of the items we had decided to register for with my top choices of models of each item to better guide our selection. Hey, I am scary when given a project to work on.

We arrived at Target and headed to the Customer Service desk, where I bubbled through the entire sign-up process, alternately expressing to my poor fiance and the poor girl who was helping us How Excited I Was and How Much Fun This Would Be. Luckily, the process didn't last long, and we were handed a scanner and given a mini-lesson on how to use it. A few more instructions, and we were off!

At the advice of the brides who came before me, I gave Bill control over the scanner. I figured it would be fun for him to wield the gun, and I was busy obsessively consulting my list to make sure we didn't miss anything. First stop...housewares! But wait, there's the furniture! Look at that sofa table! BEEP! And that end table! BEEP! We were off and running...and the first few things we scanned weren't even on our list.

We did make it to the housewares, where we picked out things like a vacuum cleaner, a coffeemaker, a blender, and attachments for my Kitchenaid stand mixer. We made our way into the other departments, where we picked out glassware and cookware and bathroom accessories and golfballs (for someone other than me). And we kept careful track of what we had chosen so that we could go on-line (read: I could go on-line) and update the registry with things that we didn't find in the store later. And now I have my very own registry to stalk. I finished the day with a smile on my face a mile wide and a golden strawberry margarita at Applebee's. Operation Registry was a success.

Now, I will be heading to Boscov's with my mom to round out the registry list with things like towels and a duvet cover and dishes. I offered Bill another go-round with the scanner, but he declared that our trip to Target was enough for him. He is putting our decor details in my hands. He's a prince among men...and he's all mine.