With sadness I must report that the uniquely greedy, ungrateful US wedding practice of controlling the gifts a wedding couple believe they are entitled to receive has migrated to India. Weep with me fellow Ehellions.
Tag: Registry
Cringe-Worthy Regret? Yep, Been There, Done That…How Shame Works To Shape Future Behavior
I have been reading this site a fair bit over the last few years, and always find it both entertaining and instructive. Recently though, when I’ve made the odd comment giving my opinion on the subject at hand, I’ve found myself thinking, “Would I have had the same reaction to this post five, ten, fifteen years ago?” It’s made me realize that sometimes I’m judging people from the privileged position of experience, and at least some knowledge of etiquette (most of which I’ve gleaned from this very site).
I thought it might be interesting to see if anyone else has committed crimes against etiquette and graceful behaviour in the past, which cause them now to look back and cringe at their former selves. Here’s my own story, which concerns my wedding.
My husband and I married about twelve years ago, in our mid-twenties. I’ll leave out most of the details so as not to get mired in unnecessary description. Briefly, it was a traditional church ceremony followed by a catered buffet reception at the same venue. We invited about sixty people, about fifty of who attended, a mix of family and good friends. Overall it was a lovely day, and we still occasionally get compliments on the relaxed and happy atmosphere, the ceremony (particularly the music), the venue, and my dress (£180 from Monsoon, for those in the UK. If only I could still fit into it!) The only “mishaps” were my BIL spilling water all down the front of his suit while moving a pedestal of flowers, and the fact that I preferred my bridesmaid’s bouquet to my own! Oh well.
And so straight to my faux pas, and I’m afraid it’s a major one. We included a “registry” with the invitations. Worse, that registry was what I can only describe in hindsight as a cash-grab. (I assure you I am wincing as I type this). I don’t have an excuse for this. It was an action borne of ignorance, and, if I force myself to be brutally honest, a bit of over-excited greed.
My husband and I had been saving up for our honeymoon throughout our engagement (sixteen months), and had booked it all about two months before our wedding. At the time, I thought one was supposed to receive gifts at one’s wedding; I thought that was just the way it was. And what we wanted was some extra spending money for our honeymoon (yep, still cringing hard over here). Now in the spirit of full disclosure, I was going to include the actual text from the dreaded “Gift List” in this submission, but I’ve just looked through my wedding memory box, and it isn’t there. I have copies of the save the date card, the invitation itself, the order of service, and the readings we had (the officiant read Song of Solomon 8. 6-7, my dad read a passage from The Fellowship of the Ring, and my best friend [my bridesmaid] read Robert Frost’s The Road Not Taken). But I no longer have a copy of that dreaded gift list. I can’t say I’m surprised, as I had a vague memory of, at some point in the intervening years, having got rid of the wretched thing, and so I must have done.
So as accurately as I can reproduce from memory, it said something like, “We do not expect gifts, but if you would like to make a contribution to our honeymoon, here are some ideas.” There then followed a list ranging from “posh dinner out” at £80/$150, through things like museum admission and cinema tickets, down to “public transit tickets for the day” at £5/$9. (We’re British, our honeymoon was to the U.S., and at the time the exchange rate heavily favoured the pound over the dollar). It was printed in the same font and on the same type of paper as the invitation, on a separate piece of paper, but enclosed in the same envelope.
What were we thinking?! I’ll be as honest as I can. While we did believe at the time that it was usual protocol to provide gift lists, we were also pleasurably excited at the thought of receiving cash gifts that we would benefit from. And as I said before, I can really only put that down to greed on our part. Looking back on it, two things in particular about our gift list really stand out to me, aside from the incredible idiocy of including it in the first place: 1) The fact that we included “prices” in both pounds and dollars, which adds a rather special tackiness to the whole thing. 2) The wording that introduced the dreadful document. “We do not expect gifts, but if you would like to… ” As I said, I’m reproducing the wording from memory only, but I’m pretty sure it’s fairly accurate. And looking at it with wiser eyes, my own wording now says quite plainly to me: “We know we’re asking for something we have no right to, but we want it, so we’re going to ask for it anyway”. In other words: a greedy, thoughtless guilt-trip.
As a side note, it surprises me looking back that neither my mum or dad vetoed this. They are both the type of person to tactfully speak up if they think I’m about to make a mistake, they are both well-mannered and considerate people, and my mum in particular cares what others think, and has a horror of doing anything rude or gauche for no reason. The fact that they blithely posted these gift-grabbing enclosures along with the invitations can only suggest to me that they themselves had no idea there was anything wrong with it. I want to be clear that I’m not making excuses for my actions. Do I wish that, twelve years ago, someone had stepped in and told us how rude and tacky my husband and I were being? Of course. But I also know that we’re reasonably intelligent people who, had we stopped to think properly about what we were doing, would’ve known that we were doing the wrong thing.
Which is the main reason I’m so grateful for this site. The most important lesson I’ve gotten from it over the years is to always ask the question, often mentioned by Admin, “Who does this serve?” In some cases, of course, I think it’s okay for the answer to be “me”, but that’s in situations that involve my ongoing quest to develop a polite spine. In the tale I just told, the answer should have alerted me to the mistake we were making, had I but known to ask the question in the first place. In the long run, I hope that asking myself that question has taught me to be a bit more gracious and a lot less selfish.
So this submission is in part a thank you: to the Admin for keeping up this site and for her often wise advice, and to my fellow readers and commenters for their experience and perspectives. I can honestly say that EHell has played a big part in teaching me, over the years, to become a more well-rounded and thoughtful person.
So does anyone else have any past etiquette crimes to confess? Awkward, tacky, or just plain heinous things they did in the past but would know better than to do now? I for one would probably feel better for hearing them! And if Admin or commenters are so inclined, I’ll gladly take my lumps for the gift list debacle. While it’s a lesson I’ve taken to heart, fresh eyes on the situation couldn’t hurt. There may be perspectives I hadn’t considered.
While I am not averse to trying to shake some sense and courtesy into the mindless, clueless and outright greedy/boorish people of the world, it’s not an Ehell “thang” to beat up on the sincerely penitent. We celebrate those who develop beyond being a typically selfish person and who embrace the past mistakes in order to become better people in the future.
Do I have cringe-worthy regret? You better believe it! Mine nearly always involves some foot-in-mouth faux pas since I am a gregarious person who wears her emotions on her sleeve and sometimes the governor in my brain hasn’t been well connected to my mouth. I flinch thinking of some of the mindless things that have popped out of my mouth but I use that regret, and, yes, shame, to my advantage by making it a learning moment. How would I have done or said that differently? How can I develop more discretion? I’m told by people I’ve apologized to that I am overthinking my offense since they claim to not be as offended as I assumed they could be but I’d rather err on the side of being aware of how I have the ability to be offensive as opposed to being oblivious.
Shame is a good thing, in my opinion, because some things are shameful and thus deserving of regret and cringing. Shame and regret are the deterrent to future mistakes.
Car Registry
I love the site, as it’s informative and funny. It’s been especially enlightening when I apply lessons from submitted stories to events I see in my own life. For example, tonight when I was watching television, a commercial for the new Dodge Dart came on. But it wasn’t the ad I’ve seen multiple times before, it was a new one. For a car registry.
There is a website which I will quote from, “NEW RULES FOR BUYING YOUR CAR. Pick out the features you want in your new Dart and then invite friends and family to sponsor individual parts of the car. You can raise a portion of the cost of a new Dart or the full price. Then all you have to do is go to a dealership and pick it up.”
This is basically the commercial in 3 sentences. While watching it, my mouth dropped open in surprise, and after the initial shock wore off, I thought, “I better send this to Ehell!”, because of all the stories concerning registries. Anyway, you might’ve already heard about this, but I thought I would submit this just in case.
P.S. Go to the website. At the bottom of the first page, there’s actually a live feed, telling visitors, “So-and-so received funding 5 hours and 4 minutes ago,” or “So-and-so created a new registry.” At least they didn’t list the amount given to the special so-and-sos. 0210-13
I deliberately edit out the URL of this registry because I have principled rejection of promoting web sites that prey upon people.
If anyone had doubts that registries have not morphed into structured gimme opportunities, this should dispel that notion. It used to be that one mark of adulthood was that you took ownership of your responsibility to provide for yourself and your ability to move into adult society without mooching off of friends and family. The concept of buying what you can afford, namely a used car, seems to be lost on people who want what they want NOW. I routinely watch real estate “reality” shows such as “House Hunters” and am often struck by the impatient greediness of some couples who want extravagant features in a house they cannot afford. Granite counter tops, stainless steel appliances, hardwood floors, jetted bathtub, etc. are some of the “must have” amenities the budget cannot accommodate. The young couples most notably often do not appear to be willing to wait and work over years to eventually acquire those desired features. So Dodge is capitalizing on that impatience and assisting people who have no business buying a brand new car they cannot afford by offering them the means to solicit their friends and family to fund the purchase of a new Dart. In my family and circle of friends, this kind of registry would elicit the immediate reaction of,”Is this a joke?”, followed by a firm decline to have anything to do with such an obvious attempt to use family and friends to assist in buying something the person clearly cannot afford by themselves.
Pre-emptive Registry Clean Up
This is the story of my sister-in-law’s (SIL1) baby shower which happened this past weekend. I live halfway across the country and wasn’t able to attend. My other sister-in-law (SIL2) who was attending and I went in together to purchase a rather expensive gift—a stroller/carseat combo.
Well, along comes the day of the shower, and it turns out that a week prior, SIL1’s mother and father went out and bought EVERYTHING on the registry that hadn’t been purchased yet. Every single item. A week BEFORE the shower. Now, we’ve always known that SIL1 and her mother had a disturbingly close relationship (SIL1 and brother bought a house in the same neighborhood as her parents, SIL1 calls her mom 5 times a day, etc.) but apparently “grandma” started to get nervous as the date of the shower approached and there were still things not purchased and decided to remedy the situation lest her daughter feel any sort of slight. Well SIL2 was coming from out of town so didn’t pick up the stroller/carseat until a few days before the shower. Neighbor1 was running behind and didn’t make it to the store until a day before the shower—only to find that there was nothing left on the registry to purchase. Now the etiquette of registries is a tricky one, but who ever heard of the future grandparents going out a week before the first baby shower and cleaning it up? I could understand going out after the shower and getting what hadn’t been gotten, but before?
So, SIL2 and my mom head off to the shower, not knowing about what the other side had done, bringing our fairly expensive present. My mom told my brother to open the stroller/carseat first, but he said, no, we can’t because we already have one. Fully assembled at home. Got it a week ago. Mom and SIL2 were gobsmacked and didn’t know what to do. Frankly, it was a good thing I wasn’t there because I would have de-gifted and told them I’d return it to the store and get them something they didn’t have—which would have been nothing. I know I am going to think long and hard about getting them any presents in the future—and I am especially glad I didn’t purchase expensive plane tickets just to go and see them open a present they already had and certainly didn’t need or appreciate. It made the whole thing seem sordid and tacky and like a money grab. 0626-11
Why would you punish your brother and his wife for something your sister-in-law’s mother did? It’s not like they can graciously decline to accept the offered gifts. It sounds like your brother’s mother-in-law put him in an awkward situation with his family and friends.
Addendum….I almost never buy from registries for this reason (among others). Instead, buy a creative gift you know is very unlikely anyone will also give. My daughter is expecting my first granddaughter in a few weeks and her friends are hosting a baby shower soon. This is one of the items I’m giving as a gift.
It’s a twist from the typical diaper “cake”. Super easy to make (took me at most 45 minutes to assemble) and unique enough that no one will give the same thing. The diaper bike consists of the following:
Newborn disposable diapers as the tires
2 rolled receiving blankets as the chassis/axles and handle bars
2 bibs as the fenders
1 burp cloth as the seat
1 4-oz. plastic bottle for the headlight
1 pair of frilly socks for the handlebar grips
1 pink bowed headband for the part above the light
1 doll, although this one in the photo is not to scale..didn’t want granddaughter with a huge doll
All sitting on a 14 inch cake round. The most difficult part was figuring out how to assemble the diapers into a round spiral for the tires. Problem solved by using an 8 or 9 inch springform pan. I made a single tube using one diaper with a rubber band for the axle, stood it in the middle of the pan and added all the rest of the diapers in a tight spiral around it. Wrap a large rubber band to secure them all in place and cover with a 2 inch wide ribbon to hide the rubber band.
I cannot take credit for designing this. I found photos on the web and figured it out myself. Other gifts include a handmade, heirloom quality, crocheted baby afghan.
Skipping The Money Laundering Step
I just received a wedding invitation in the mail that directed guests to check the couple’s wedding website for updates and details. Hmm, OK. Some wedding websites include cute stories about the couple or photos, so it’s worth a look.
I go to the website, and it contains a “Registry” section. Not my fave, but fine, let me see what the bride and groom are asking for…perhaps they’re asking for an item I planned to buy them anyway. “We are registered at DenseJungle.com, BedroomandBathroomCrap.com and BoxandBucket.com; click here to view the registries.”
When I clicked on the registries I was taken to the typical registry pages generated by these respective retailers. I think we all know what these website registries look like. For each item the bride and groom request, there’s a small thumbnail image of the item, the cost, the “Quantity Needed” (for example if they want bath towels, they might ask for 8), and then a tally of how many they’ve received so far, to avoid duplicates.
But to my surprise, the only item listed for purchase at all three retailers was a gift card! So, rather than walking through the big box stores and scanning in sheets, towels, dishes, etc, the couple has opted for the ultimate combination of greediness AND laziness by providing a single entry at all three sites: “$50 Gift Card; Quantity Needed: 20.”
All three sites have a big fat ZERO listed under “Quantity Received,” so apparently I’m not the only person who’s appalled. 0608-10
Well, at least they are not fooling people by registering for gifts they do not want so they can be returned for cash, i.e. registry money laundering.