Registering my Sanity

As my friends have gotten married over the years, I have watched them go through all the planning stages taking mental notes of what parts were more fun than others. I thought registering for gifts was the most brilliant idea ever and that it would be a lot of fun. I mean, what’s not fun about taking a scanner around a store and scanning any item you want? It’s the perfect activity for couples because the girl can go all around each store picking out things she wants while her fiancé follows her around and scans everything she points to. Most guys don’t have much of an opinion about what color the kitchen towels are or whether the appliances are chrome or white. Most guys don’t care what the shower curtain looks like or whether they have table cloths, napkins and placemats. Or at least that was the impression I got from most of my friends. I have since come to the knowledge that registering is really my worst nightmare and any couple who can come out of it still loving one another deserves congratulations.

I should not have been so short sighted in my thinking about registering. The first and biggest reason why this is really not one of the more entertaining parts of wedding planning is that I hate shopping. This is a well known fact and has been for years. That is not to say that I do not like to buy things, but actually going to stores, trying things on, testing things out and browsing for hours is the closest thing to a living hell as I could come. My shopping threshold is about 45 minutes. After that, I start to get anxious, frustrated and impatient. I immediately become a little snappy and difficult. It’s like my whole body knows when it has had enough and it just shuts down.

As if shopping in and of itself wasn’t bad enough, I especially hate stores that are large, crowded and have too many things to look at or choose from. Macy’s, Bloomingdale’s, Old Navy, GAP, H&M… these stores could potentially send me straight to an anxiety attack. I have been in Macy’s one time. It was last year, and I was trying to buy some lingerie for a bridal shower… I had to go through 6 floors, scour through what seemed like hundreds of racks and I still couldn’t find anything classy and beautiful. It was a nightmare. I couldn’t figure out how to get out because there were about 700 escalators going in every direction but none of them seemed to be going down to the bottom floor. I wanted to be in there for 15 minutes and I ended up being in there for more than an hour. It was horrible. I vowed I would never go there again. I like small stores that have a limited selection that I can look at in less than 20 minutes. If I like it, great. If not, I can move on. H&M seems to be everyone’s favorite around here, but it’s just several floors of hundreds of racks of clothes, most of which are a mess from thousands of people picking through them. There are about 500 people in there at any given moment and the fitting rooms are as long as a line at an amusement park.

So, I was excited to register. This is the one time I get to pick out all the cool kitchen and home things I have always wanted for someone else to buy for me. But, it has not been what I always thought it would be. Our first attempt was at Williams-Sonoma, which didn’t seem so bad because it’s small enough that it isn’t overwhelming. Plus, I am just dealing with kitchen here. We found lots of things we liked, but then we started to say to ourselves, “Do we really need this?” Nah. By the end of the night, we didn’t really have much of anything. The little scanner was acting up, and we were spent after about 40 minutes. Luckily, you can do all of this stuff online as well, which is the rainbow at the end of this unfortunate storm. Our next attempt was to Bed, Bath & Beyond, and this was just a recipe for disaster… huge store, 5 million too many things to choose from, too many categories, too many people, confusing layout and frustrating music. Again, the scanner was weird, the girl didn’t explain everything very well, we started to get frustrated and it had only been 20 minutes. I couldn’t find a shower curtain I wanted, Cameron didn’t like the curtain rings and couldn’t see the different colors of the towels, the music was grating on my ears and I was getting angrier by the minute. Finally, I just said, “We have to get out of here.” So we turned in our scanner after scanning some towels and called it a day. Once outside, I could take a few deep breaths and I felt so much better. The thought of going back in that store makes me want to crawl into a deep hole until next Christmas. How do people do this? Online. It’s the only answer.

I think Cameron and I are coming up with a plan of attack in order to conquer this necessary custom of tying the knot. We want the stuff… but we don’t know what we need or want or what will fit into our apartment… because we haven’t found one yet. Then I just look at the Pottery Barn and Crate & Barrel catalogues and I just want someone to say, “Nikki, pick out whatever you want for your house and I will pay for it.” Where do I find this person?? Living in New York, you really discover what you need and what you can live without. For me, as a minimalist who hates clutter… I can live without a lot of things. But I don’t want to live without the kitchenaid… that was the first thing in the scanner at Williams-Sonoma. By the end of this ordeal, it may be the only thing on the list.