REGISTERING - To Depot or Not to Depot

Registering is creating a list of items you would like to have to get started as a married couple.  You then share this list with your invited guests, who you hope will purchase the listed items. Don’t confuse this list with a Christmas list. A Christmas list is stuff you want. This is a list of what is going to replace all of the stuff that symbolizes your manly existence, like the fork and plate you eat with. Yes, intentionally singular. The assessment of my personal possessions began. I was prepared to take a couple of punches, because honesty is the foundation of a healthy relationship.

“I’ve always found your dinner plates mannish and not very attractive. We should get new ones,” Christa said.

Or sometimes the softer approach was applied. “Your towels are nice, but I don’t think they will fit the new color scheme.”

I did not remember the new color scheme ever being discussed, but my possessions and I were under new ownership. I was being rebranded as a part of a stylish and welcoming couple with appropriately colored guest towels.

Once I was released from the burden of anything I owned, that is, anything I had picked out for myself without her consultation, I was free to explore what suited me in the role of lesser half.

“Ooh, I like Pottery Barn,” she said. Which I admit was an excellent choice, but perhaps I should have made it seem like I was really sacrificing for her, since I was eventually going to try and get something I wanted.

We cranked out a list of possible retailers that could provide new guest towels and the like. And then I asked, “How about Home Depot?”

“No,” she bluntly replied.

“It would help with…”

“No.”

“We could use a…”

“No.”

“The house will need…”

“No.”

I went with logic, my first mistake. Our new home in Cincinnati wasn’t a fixer-upper, but it was an improver-needer. What better way to help us make a home together than the helpful folks and products at Home Depot, the “everything for your home improvement” store.

“No one wants to shop for wedding gifts at Home Depot. You might as well ask for an oil change as a gift,” she explained to me.

“If that would get you to take the car in, I would. You know it’s an essential service,” I responded.

You can see the wrong turn so clearly in retrospect. I was able to convince her to ask someone else, her sister, and surprise! It was still a bad idea.

I asked one of my friends who was getting married a month before us, and he said, “I wish. I could really use a Dremel.”

Man friends stand by you in the tough times. Why not clearly distinguish the man gifts, so each guest can show favoritism? Even men with callus-free hands, like me, enjoy the feel of a power tool, and my man friends would willingly shop for them. Hello ladies. Relieve yourselves of the gift-shopping burden by adding a man-friendly option. Do you really think we are ever going to distinguish and utilize glassware by beverage type? I knew this was not a victory to be won. So I relinquished my quest, but not before going to Home Depot’s website and noting that they did have registry services. So I’m not that crazy.

We eventually selected our retail options by determining, first, that we should register at no more than three stores. Then we identified which stores were locally available to our parents’ invitees, who might not be Internet shoppers, and finally we established which stores could collectively replace the greatest percentage of my mannish and unfriendly possessions.
- Drew Lloyd
From "Will You?" to "I Do.": A Groom's Tale of Survival