These things remind me of you

I was poking around an Amazon.com gift list today in search of a gift for a particular individual who shall remain nameless. Gift lists are great -- you don't have to think about what a person might want because they're telling you what they want, and then all you have to do is click a button and voila, it's done. What could have been a mind-wracking ordeal is over in a matter of minutes. And I admit, I use registries a lot -- find them oh so convenient, especially if I have to ship a gift for a wedding or an anniversary; it saves me time and effort to get online, pull up a registry, and the only energy expended are mouse clicks.

But -- you did know a 'but' was coming, didn't you? -- I also find the idea of a registry awfully materialistic; in the interests of full disclosure, I should reveal that I also have an Amazon wishlist myself. I made it a few years back, judging by some of the dates on the items I selected -- obviously done while I was going through a short-lived Eleanor of Aquitaine phase (I found her annoying after a while and could sympathesize with poor Henry who finally locked her away) -- and then promptly forgot about the darn thing until recently. So now that that hypocritical note is out of the way, I feel more prepared to talk about registries.

Recently, my parents received two wedding invitations. One included four cards -- four! -- to the various stores where the bride and groom were registered. The second kindly asked that guests not bring any gifts at all. While I appreciate gift-giving as a traditional part of a wedding, a way of getting a couple started in their lives, these days it's not as important, at least not in my experience. People are getting married later, they have jobs, they accumulate stuff, they live together, etc. As a result, a lot of registries are filled with the more extravagant "wants" rather than the more basic needs.

More and more, I'm turning into an anti-registry person. Why? Because it feels like an obligation, that some events exist solely for the purpose of bestowing gifts and in some cases, the recipients are more excited about the gifts than the fact you attended their special event (this actually happened to me and because it had been a financial burden to make the trip to attend, it was a wee bit hurtful as well). You're no longer giving gifts to the new mother because you want to but because she is registered at Babies R Us and so the expectation is written in black and white. Granted, registering makes it easy when you want to give a gift and I'm guessing that for most big events, we really do want to give something as a token of the celebration, and hell, why not request it?

But back to my original bottomline: I think it was so very cool of that couple to request no gifts on their wedding invitations. I think it was cool and classy and it showed they were inviting you, not because they wanted your gifts, but they wanted you. Compare that to someone who enclosed four registry cards in her invitation.