Wedding registries are killing me.

Here is what I have learned about our wedding this week: I do not want to be registered at Crate & Barrel. Here's how I learned it: I registered at Crate & Barrel.

We haven't really figured out what we're going to do about a registry, and honestly, with just over a year to go until the wedding, I figured I didn't have to worry about it for a long time. And I don't, really. But it seems to be something that people start asking about, and Torsten and I weren't quite sure what to do about it, especially given that we will have many international invitees who will not be familiar with American stores like Crate & Barrel whose websites are available only in English.

Our solution to this is to register at two places: one will be Amazon.com and the other is TBD. Amazon is Torsten's choice; it's his favourite place to shop and they have a site in all the countries from which our guests hail. We just hope that our registry will be accessible from any of them. We haven't looked into that yet.

So it follows that the second place will be my choice. So at first I thought, okay, C&B, no question, because I love that store (so much that I brought it up in my third blog entry ever, before I had any readers except a couple of college friends--hi Jill!). So I figured, fine, I'll go online and register and not tell anyone about the registry and then see what I think.

So I went online one evening, and I registered, and I got a bit overwhelmed at the selection of glassware, and cutting boards, and kitchen towels. I kept asking for Torsten's opinion and he kept being like, "Why would we need a set of matching dishtowels? We already have plenty of dishtowels." In other words, he was Not Helpful.

So I registered for a bunch of stuff that either I thought was attractive or I thought we would use or (ideally) both. Some of it was cool. Most of it, in retrospect, was the kind of thing that I would briefly look at when I went into C&B, then choose not to buy because I just didn't want it that badly. I was registering for things because I felt that I should.

I guess I'm not one of those people who's always thought, Wow, I can't wait to register for wedding gifts so that I can finally have a fully functional kitchen/stop sleeping on a bare mattress. And now I keep getting these emails from C&B saying things like, "Hurry! Custom upholstery sale ends in three days!" and it's exactly those emails that have made me decide that much as I love C&B as a place to wander and admire and occasionally make a purchase, it is not a place where I want to register. Because really? Custom upholstery?

But basically what happened was that I got so confused about registries and what to register for and how it works and oh God, why do I suck so much at this? Here are the concepts that I am stumbling over when it comes to registering:

• We don't need anything, per se. My mom already got us our wedding china, and we had two separate apartments before; we are already fully-stocked. So what we can do with the wedding registry is upgrade. Instead of a bunch of mis-matched, threadbare towels, we could get a stylish, matching set of plush ones in a matching colour/pattern. We could get a really nice set of knives for the kitchen, amazing cookware, a new down blanket. We could get home accents like vases. But we don't need it, and it feels weird to register for stuff just because it looks like fun.
  
• We live in an 800-square foot, 1-bedroom apartment that, while spacious for what it is, and loaded with closets, is already filled pretty much to the max with our stuff. I mean, there's room for more, but only if we want to feel surrounded by stuff, which we don't. We are planning to move to a bigger place, but not until after the wedding, and possibly not directly afterward. It depends on a lot of factors. Once we move, we will have a lot of things we need in order to furnish and decorate more than two rooms. But we don't know yet what those needs will be.
• Our income is in a place where we can purchase most reasonably-priced things that we need or want. The stuff we don't purchase is the big stuff, like furniture, and super-expensive kitchen things. Unfortunately, I feel like our disposable income spending range is similar to the range that most people spend on wedding presents. So we are supposed to be registering for exactly the type of thing that we would normally just go ahead and buy for ourselves--or perhaps have already gone ahead and bought.
• I suppose you could say that what we should do is stop buying that kind of stuff for ourselves, put the money we would have spent into the Future House Decorating fund, and let our wedding guests get those things for us. But the problem with that is that we have already bought most of that stuff. There isn't much left on the list, and what is on the list is stuff that occurs to us slowly, over time.
• Torsten likes things that are electronic, like wireless music players and stuff. My understanding is that wedding registries, at least for people who remember them from the time when weddings meant the creation of a new household, are about household stuff, like dishes and salt shakers. Not for fun gadgets. Will people be taken aback if we have stuff like fun modern techie things on our registry? Also, most of what he wants is over the $100 line that I usually think of for weddings.
• What about stuff like artwork for your walls? Are wedding registry items supposed to be practical things? So that the guests can say, Oh, they need this, I'm really helping them get on their feet, here.
  
• I am definitely not one of those people who will say, Oh, we don't need anything--for our wedding, I'd like you all to donate to charity. I am just not that good of a person. Instead, I am the type of person who sits there agonizing and being like, Help! People are offering me free stuff and I want to have it! I know there are things we would like and can use, but I cannot for the life of me think of what they are! Can you take a rain check on a wedding registry?
• I know that a lot of people think it's tacky to "register" for money/gift cards/honeymoon contributions/other forms of just handing over a check, and while I personally don't have a problem with such things when my friends do them, I don't want to piss off a lot of people, especially family members, by doing it. Especially because I also think it's fun to open up gifts and have things. If we had money we would feel compelled to use it responsibly--like add it to our down payment fund.
• Now that my favourite home store has been eliminated from the running, I am casting about for a new place to register. Macy's? Bloomingdales? Not a department store?
  
• What I really want is to buy a house with a few rooms in it and then go to this amazing discount furniture store in North Carolina (seriously, people. This place is astonishing. It's miles and miles, literally, of all types of amazing furniture at all different prices. It is glorious, as long as you have the stamina to stay there for at least a day. People actually travel to High Point and the surrounding area and stay in hotels for several days, just to shop for furniture) to furnish it. Because that is the next step in our life together, so that is what really seems to make sense in terms of the spirit of wedding gifts, i.e. launching the newlyweds down the path toward their life together. But you can't register for furniture. It's too expensive. And like I said, I don't want to register for gift cards. So basically, I'm totally stuck.
  

So basically, the point of this post is: Help! What do I do?