#scanthat

There are so many things on the wedding to-do list.

Okay, there’s actually not that many things to do, but they require a lot of decisions, and decisions are hard.

But there’s one thing that Phil and I have actually been looking forward to and not dreading. Registering for wedding gifts.

In my mind, it’s like shopping, but with other people’s money! (don’t judge me. It IS kind of like that.) And I can’t help but daydream about what it will be like to move out of my suitcase and into a home. To have a place to decorate however I want! To clean a house where the messes were my own (as opposed to the previous rig trailer occupant). To do my laundry and hang it in the closet, instead of folding it back into the suitcase. Registering is like building a future home! It’s like daydreaming, but real life!

For Phil, I think registering is a combo of getting to use the scanning gun and seeing how many random things he can add to the registry. We are definitely both having fun imagining our future home together, but I think he’s equally as interested in finding the perfect fish tie or giant apple sculpture to add to the registry. But hey, who doesn’t love a good fish tie?

So anyway, we decided that we should start the registry soon even though we still have 261 days until our wedding. Not because we’re great at prioritizing the wedding to-do list, but because we were excited to go “shopping” and use the scanner!

We had no idea how far in over our heads we were. Having both grown up in consumerism-based America, and having both been on our own long enough to form plenty of opinions and preferences on things, neither of us considered how big the problem of choices would be. You know how the yogurt section of the grocery store has 5 types of yogurt, 50 brands, and 1,000 flavors? And that doesn't even include the varying levels of viscosity/drinkability. Well, that’s how registering is. But you aren’t picking yogurt, you’re choosing your future. (you may think I’m being overly dramatic. I’m not. I’m applying the appropriate amount of drama to this situation.) So we got to the store, and on our way to the registry desk we finally voiced our unpreparedness:

“I don’t know how you do this.”

“Me either. I’ve never made a wedding registry before.”

We found the wedding registry desk, and the confusion began. There were coupons and points and rewards and percents and sales and timelines and credit cards and by the time she gave us the fun gun we were both a little overwhelmed.

So we started with the kitchen. We both cook, so we know how to choose our cooking supplies, right? Nope. We decided we wanted dishwasher safe pots and pans, so that would help narrow things down. False. Since when is every pan ever made dishwasher safe? What other pan-picking criteria is there! Will it cook my food? Yes. Can I clean it afterwards? That’s what dishwasher safe is for! (But can we trust all the promises the stickers are making? Do we have time to pull up some user reviews on our smart phones? What would our mom's pick? What does google say? We aren't qualified to make decisions this serious!) 

“So which of these 400 pots do you like Phil?”

“Uh… lets come back to the pots and pans. How about bathroom stuff?”

Turns out bathrooms are stressful. There is an entire wall of towels. From floor to ceiling. In every shade and plushness level. We were looking at some lovely green towels, and we started chatting with an employee restocking near us. She wanted to know what color our bathroom walls were. “Uh… we don’t know yet.” Then she wanted to know what color the rest of our stuff was. “Uh… we don’t really have stuff.” Then we got a funny look. Everyone has stuff, how can you not have stuff? Alright, we have two kitchen tables, an off-white couch, and an orange lamp. But I don’t know how those affect our bath towel decisions. Maybe I’m not ready for this whole interior decorating thing either! Oh dear. (Side note: why in the world does no one use patterned bath towels? I mean, why are patterns reserved solely for beach towels? Would some stripes or polka dots make your bathroom towels look too beachy? Just saying.)

So we moved on to silverware. We both use silverware pretty regularly, and pairing that with our extensive materials knowledge as chemical engineers I assumed we would be pretty good judges of silverware.

“Hey- do you like these?”

“Oh they look just like these! Wait, are they these?”

“I just saw that the style is called pomfret. We can definitely do better.”

“What about these?”

“The knives are too heavy.”

“The tongs on these forks are too springy.”

Ting! Ting! Ting!

We went through each set of silverware (except the styles with ugly names or heavy knives of course) and tinged all of the forks.

“Listen to these! They sound legit.”

Scan ‘em!