More Is More

Jill and I are engaged, but the details of the proposal, the champagne, and the love are all a little mushy and not really tin car quality material. A month of premarital bliss has transpired now, and I’ve rarely had an emotion that wouldn’t qualify as schmaltzy. The rights of marriage are not typically the topics that get tin car’s readership going, that is until today when Jill and I participated in the gluttony of wedding gift registration.

The tradition of registering for wedding gifts is a tumultuous and emotionally complex event with the primary emotion being greed, followed closely by entitlement, and aggression. This delicate mental state is pressed into action by primal impulses of consumerism that originate in the brainstem of the children of free-market capitalism who are old enough to fornicate and carry debt. Scientists have speculated that the registry impulse is related to the slightly higher-level impulse function to dry-clean jeans.

As a novice at marriage, I was unfamiliar with the customs of the bridal registry, so I’ve done my best to infer some basic rules to help fellow novices feel more at ease with the plunder.

Here are the rules:

1. Get while the getting’s good

The mores of our culture are set up to give you one good chance to demand that your friends and loved ones buy expensive bobbles for your home, and if you don’t take advantage of this windfall, you’ll never get a second chance.

2. If it exists, register for it

One of the biggest faux pas of a bridal registry is not to want enough shit. Wedding guests are required to buy you a gift by social laws that are older and more binding than congressional legislation, so it is imperative that there is enough shit on the registry for everyone to find a contribution. When you register, the question is not if you need a 6th crystal, fruit bowl or even if you want it. The question is can you tolerate it. Quantity is the issue here.

3. Believe you live in a mansion

You may live in a five hundred square-foot apartment that is questionably large enough to hold a bed and a laundry basket, but shop like you’re filling a Hapsburg palace.

While the building of the registry is afoot, there are some dangerous ideas that may come slithering into mind and these ideas are to be dashed to the curb so you can focus on “getting yours”. Here are some thoughts that may arise that are to be treated lightly and with indifference.

• That’s a lot of money to ask people to spend on a creamer.
• We can’t fit all this in our house.
• I’m really quite sure I’d never use that.
• Won’t people get mad at us for asking them to spend so much money?
• Are the dishes that we already have really so inferior to these dishes?

Don’t let these kinds of corrupting thoughts confuse the issue of engagement. Stay true to the tradition and register like a pirate claiming his booty.