I come from a small-townish, very conservative area of the country. 75 years ago it was all farmland, and now it is all subdivisions. Everyone marries young, and marries a high school sweetheart, a high school acquaintence, or someone they dated in college. Mostly, they move back after college to get married. I'm at the age now where there is a sudden spike in weddings back home, as everyone who didn't get it taken care of before is suddenly wrapping up that loose end. Thanks to the internet, and the apparent need for some people to gloat about an impending marriage as if it is an accomplishment instead of a future regret, it's impossible not to know who is getting married and where they are registered.
Out of boredom and morbid curiousity, I will occasionally peruse these wedding registries. A wedding registry is a testamonial to a couple's bad taste in nearly everything, as well as a depressing commentary on the banal conformity with which they will live their domestic lives. Almost without exception, it happens like this:
The couple will register at Bed Bath & Beyond and/or possibly Target. They may register for a few things at Macy's, which will cause some distant relatives of advanced age to think they are getting uppitty. They will register for French White Corningware, Oxo Goodgrips kitchen utensils, and things made of Pyrex. There will be an eight-cup muffin pan on their resistry; it will never be used, but the girl knows that if she didn't have a muffin pan on the registry she would never hear the end of it from her pneumatic great aunt. The couple will debate about registering for anything which suggests they drink alcohol, and probably decide against it to avoid awkardness with the more conservative elements of the family. They will register for many kitchen things they will have no use for, because they have a house with cabinets and drawers that need to be filled. They will register for a matching set of bathroom accessories, because the vulgarity of matching toothbrush and toiletbrush holders has not and will never occur to them. The big splurge will be a Kitchenaid stand mixer, which the couple will simultaneously feel elated and guity about receiving, and they will register for bathroom towels in taupe or navy or moss green. Finally, they will select some scented candles, picture frames, and inexpensive throw pillows; the girl thinks that these will be nice gifts for someone to give them, and the guy know better than to mention something like a toolset at a time like this.
In addition to being a materialistic show of horrors, the wedding registry is also a bit of an economic puzzle. You plan a ceremony and throw a party which costs thousands or tens of thousands of dollars, and then you walk away with, most likely, less than a thousand dollars worth of merchandise. This is not favorable math; although I suppose most people balance the equation by factoring in the "priceless memories." Bah.
Sometimes when I rant about these things, the Russian lover takes it as a passive aggressive complaint about not getting married. And I have to explain that look, I might also want to stare at an elephant in a zoo and talk about the elephant in the zoo and complain about how the elephant smells, but none of that should be taken to mean that I envy the elphant in the zoo. But the Russian lover has spent too much time with women and knows that with most of them you should take whatever they tell you and proceed to believe the opposite. So when I tell him that no, really, I am happy just as we are and marriage wouldn't add to or change that, he sqints at me a bit as if he's trying to crack some tricky secret code.
I think by now, though, he believes me. We've agreed to revisit the subject in a few years and see if I've changed my mind as I careen toward 30, but as of now I have no burning need to make the Russian lover into my Russian husband. I'd much rather watch other women scramble to acquire gravy boats and matching towel sets as they marry some dufus, not yet realizing that in 10 or so years they'll wish they had registered only for a man worth keeping.