Wii Wii

On the social acceptability of registering for video games.

By Sara Cardace

No sooner had I started to feel proud of having gotten so much accomplished during that weekend with my parents than I was quickly brought back to reality by a gentle reminder from my sister that my shower was just weeks away and I really needed to take care of the registry situation. It was actually more like her fifth reminder. I'm a horrible bride-to-be.



Thing is, we didn't really want to register, at least not at first. We have plenty of great stuff for the kitchen, and our apartment is a bit too cozy to allow for much unneeded clutter. We recently took out storage to contain some of our less-used things and our apartment is still totally maxed out even with the added space. So we really weren't sure how to proceed.

...or so we thought. We started poking around at the usual stores--Crate and Barrel, Williams Sonoma, Bed Bath & Beyond and such, and realized that as soon as you start looking around you start seeing TONS of things you suddenly need. Or want. Whichever!

I ended up setting up registries at Williams-Sonoma, Crate and Barrel, and Amazon.com, mostly picking high-end gadgets that I knew we'd never spring for on our own: A spaetzle-maker, a pasta machine, a mandoline. It was actually pretty fun. And after a record-breaking week in which I broke something like five dishes all in a row (we'd been using my parents' dishware from a beach house they used to own), we decided to register for new dishes as well. We ended up going with the five-piece Kita set from Crate and Barrel --we ordered eight sets plus some matching odds and ends like a serving platter and some small cereal bowls. Do those numbers sound about right?

We actually weren't planning on consolidating the registries into an official wedding website, but it turned out that the particular places we decided on were all affiliated with WeddingChannel.com, so our registries were all going to show up there under our names unless we called the company and expressly asked them to take it off the site, which would feel a little silly.

Oh, and at the risk of having you all think I've gone off the deep end, I'm going to share the one big-ticket item we ended up registering for, which you may have guessed from the title of this post: A Nintendo Wii! Ok, now I know this is about as untraditional as you can get, and I'm sure some of you are appalled that we did so. But, well, this is supposed about things we really want as a couple, and it's the one thing we're really dying to get for the apartment (I for Wii Fit, John for Rock band). Plus I know we'll never buy it on our own, particularly now that my paychecks have stopped rolling in. We'll see if anyone (or any group of people--those things are expensive!) sees fit to indulge our admittedly not very grown-up whim. And now if we can just get an officiant nailed down and the ball rolling on our invitations, I'll really feel like I'm in good shape.

Speaking of which, I can't believe things are already this far along but my editor tells me it's soon going to be time for me to pass the torch to WEtV.com's next blogging bride-to-be! I'll be blogging straight through our honeymoon (still in the works), but starting this week, she'll be blogging as well, and she's going to keep right on going after my time has come to an end. Check back for her first post this Wednesday.