Gift Registry

OK, due to time constraints I'm going to keep this short.

A little over a week ago, Katie and I started that mostly fun task of registering at stores for wedding gifts. Making a wish-list as a couple can be very enjoyable; it can also be quite a hassle. I think Katie summarized what made this mostly fun for us: "we have kind of similar tastes." I think I can sign on-board with this. Granted, there are always going to be gender-based differences in tastes (she like floral prints, I'm not such a big fan) but most of the time we were able to find good compromises. We had also talked about our "registration strategy" before-hand as well as making pre-registration trips just to see what kind of things we needed to be thinking about. The little bit of extra effort made the day quite enjoyable.

Well, almost.

Our last stop for the day was Dillard's. Katie wanted to get silverware from there and, more importantly, this was the only major store within a 100 mile radius of her hometown. If we didn't register here, there wasn't going to be an easy way for family and friends from that section of her life to figure out what to get us. We needed to put a Dillard's list together and that was the way it was.

We would have done better to go home and skip that last stop for the evening.

After a brief stroll around to get an idea of what the store had available we approached the very elegant registry desk and announced our intentions. After a very hurried introduction and having a small booklet passed to us to fill out, the clerk was off helping some other customer. We filled out all the appropriate information on the front page as requested and waited for her to return.

And waited, and waited. It was probably close to ten minutes before she got back to us. This did not bode well.

During that time I started leafing though the booklet. Why did there need to be so many pages? We gave all the essential information on the front; what were the rest of the pages for? A quick glance and my heart sank. Page after page of blanks fields with headings like "Kitchen Utensils", "Flatware", "Dinnerware" greeted my eyes; we were going to WRITE DOWN all the items we wanted to register for? Was this some kind of joke? After two experiences at stores where we merrily hopped, skipped, and scanned our way through the registry this seemed a sick twisted version of reality. She wasn't serious was she?

Yes, yes she was. She eventually came back and had just enough time to start us on picking our first item before she was yanked away by another "emergency." Katie and I debated the merits of the various silverware choices and eventually decided on a pattern we both liked. It took about fifteen more minutes before our registry clerk was able to get back with us. She carefully WROTE DOWN our choice in silverware, smiled, and asked what else we had in mind. In a five minute burst of registry-definition we added another fifteen items. To be honest I don't know if she was able to even fully write down each item before we were on to the next. We just needed to keep her fully occupied so that our blitz could not be so easily halted. As we finished our pass through the smaller kitchen items and turned to move on to the larger items we paused just long enough that she was able to be once again pulled into another crisis.

And that pretty much sealed the deal. As Katie and I were discussing which items we wanted to add when she came back again we both, nearly tacitly, decided that this was enough. Our next round would be the last and we would finish up the registry online. By the end of the trip, we had managed to get about 25 items on our list in the span of one hour.

Maybe one of these days Dillard's will make its way into the 21st century. We are hoping that day happens soon. Like maybe sometime before our wedding.