Registering For Beaucoup Presents

Laurie Cohn
Mirror contributing writer

   I've never registered for wedding presents before. Granted, I've never been engaged before, which, I've been told, is a prerequisite for registering for wedding presents. Making all of my friends and family buy presents for me and my fiancé (see "Santa Monica's Week In Business," page 8) was not something I relished, and it was with much negotiating that I even agreed to register for presents in the first place. 
   Initially, Michael and I wanted to register with two different charities, Save Tibet for me and American Rivers for him We thought it was a great and generous idea. Since we are in the process of combining two households into one and have more stuff than we need, raising money for our two favorite charities seemed like a wonderful thing to do. The idea didn't go over too well with the few family members we ran it by, so eventually we discarded it and decided to go the traditional route and get some plates, a few spoons, and a cup or two.
   One night after work we walked over to Santa Monica Place with the intention of selecting our dishes. We had seen a beautiful Noritake pattern in "Modern Bride," and were hoping to be in and out of Macy's in a few minutes. Macy's had lots of dishes to choose from, but not the ones we initially wanted. Even though there were many nice patterns, most seemed to have a fatal flaw. Either they were too small, too fancy, too expensive, too old-fashioned, or too ugly. 
   After deciding not to decide, we walked around the department to look at silverware (stainless steel? silver plate? Ralph Lauren? Waterford? Lenox?), and then on to crystal goblets, crystal frames, and crystal vases. I took copious notes, marking down the item numbers. We hadn't officially registered, so there was no one helping us but us. I registered later that night online, but eventually decided against Macy's for Bloomingdales. 
   We may have been done with Macy's, but we weren't done with other options. A quick tour through another department store yielded nothing, and just as we were about to leave the mall we stopped in at Williams-Sonoma, the first store I had meant to visit. Bingo!! We headed towards the dishes in the back, and instantly spotted our daily dishes. No fine china for us, we decided, because we're just not fine china folks. The earthenware plates, white with cheerful yellow, blue, and green decorations, were the best things we had seen in any magazine or in person. 
   The greatest thing about registering at the Santa Monica Williams-Sonoma store was the little zapper they give you. You walk around, see something you like, and use the zapper to scan the bar code. Even the Beverly Hills store, twice the size of Santa Monica's, doesn't have a zapper. I certainly would have expected more from Beverly Hills. Half the fun was zapping. It made registering fun and easy. Sure we didn't need to register for both a large and a medium baking dish in the same pattern, but they will both be useful and zapping made it painless. 
   Michael's the cook in the family, so he focused on the pots and pans while I looked at table cloths and napkins. Doesn't everyone need a $200 Allclad saucepan? A few small vases and a large serving plate later, and we were ready to call it a night. Our silverware and drinking glass decisions would have to wait for another day, as would other household items. We turned in the zapper with complete confidence everything would be recorded correctly. If it wasn't, I could easily go online to alter our registry in any way necessary. In this modern 21st Century, our friends will be able to nix going to the store altogether, and simply log online and purchase whatever they want while sitting around the house in flannel pajamas. 
   One of the main reasons Michael and I agreed to register was the realization that the new things will be a part of our new life together. We could get rid of the old crap, the old memories, and begin accumulating our own. Thinking it through, we also remembered how much we love giving presents to our friends. We wanted to be able to accept our friends' good wishes and generosity, which, right or wrong, is often manifested in gifts. For us, the most important thing is being together, and everything else is just gravy. With all the wonderful friends and family we have, it seems as though we'll be getting a lot more gravy than we ever dreamed possible. Now about registering for that gravy boat.