Clearly we are freaks of the registry!

Adam and I went to a registry event last night at Macy's. First of all, they call it a "Sip and Scan" and advertise it as "have a drink in one hand and a registry scanner in the other...". When you hear that, what do you think they mean by drink? If you're like me, you pictured a cheap Chardonnay. If you're like Macy's you'll have bottled water (for Jen to carry in her purse and develop a shoulder problem) and warm fruit juice. And really crappy appetizers, which is so sad considering we were at the multi-story flagship Macy's on State Street and they have several awesome restaurants inside. The food and drink was such a let down! But we got our scanning gun (Adam was so excited) and carried on.

The event started on the sixth floor that only has bedding (not interested, our city bed is a full size so there is no way we are registering for good stuff until we move to a master bedroom that is not smaller than a baby's nursery in most houses) and fine china (again a not need for us because of again, the space issues and the fact that my family has tons of fine china that no one ever uses, not even on holidays, thank you very much). And on the fine china subject, I am just not a fan of the idea that I need my "own Jen and Adam pattern" to sit in boxes for 364 days of the year and be wasteful. I fought my inner "overpriced demons" and against my better judgement registered for some Waterford stuff before we got the hell out of dodge and went to the basement where they keep all the good stuff.

We visit the basement of this particular Macy's kind of on the regular because they have a giant section of Marshall Field's Frango Chocolates and they make a great gift for our guests to take home for family and friends as souvenirs. They also have a Starbucks so you can grab a quick drink and take a respite from touristing. But everytime I'm down in the basement, I basically go hogwild because it's a Martha Stewart cooking extravaganza!!

We took our gun and went to town. There were several points when I got ahead of Adam (meaning I could grab fancy utensils off the wall before he could get them all scanned) and had to slow down my excitement. I cannot wait to have decent kitchen things and I'm going to spend many hours figuring out places for all of them in my three (seriously people, I mean three) cabinets in the kitchen.

I loved every second of it (well, except when I was battling my overpriced demons but is Le Creuset really overpriced? or a Dyson? they just happen to be expensive nice things, right?)! We found lots of things that I'm not sure I'll keep on the registry. We still have an event at Crate and Barrel and our registry at Bed, Bath and Beyond to work on. And if I don't feel satisfied then, I might have to consider William-Sonoma and nix one of the others. Registry madness!

At one point, when we were winding down and starting the "ok, we should really call it quits before we end up with some totally random stuff like plastic picnic wine glasses" phase of the registry process, Adam looked around at all the other couples that were apparently in deep and dramatic discussions about the merits of pastry brushes and the like and remarked how great it was that we were so decisive about things. Which really means that I am so decisive about things since he himself said that this whole process was more about me handing him a large serving plate and him imagining all the lovely foods I'll make and serve on it. What can I say, I am a decisive person. I'm not sure that things will go so quick at Crate and Barrel because I haven't been there quite as many times as I have the downtown Macy's. But wait, who are we kidding. I am the kind of person that knows what I like and I don't need to sit there and debate it for half an hour. The Dyson? I had only heard from people that they are obsessed with them so it took me one test run and listening to the lady who reps them for about 30 seconds to tell Adam to hit it with the gun. For me, the hardest part about shopping is price and price comparison. Well, in case you didn't already figure that out, a registry completely takes that out of the equation. And if you really think about it, kind of flips my normal price woes completely upside down. People don't want to buy you cheap crap for your wedding! They want to buy you nice things that will last you through your marriage. Am I right? (Before you think I'm insane and snobby, according to our report over 80% of our items were under $50,)

Either way, we headed back to the sixth floor to return our gun and go through the obligatory Macy's card schpeel again. The lady who met us was so shocked that we were done already and asked if it was our first time opening the registry or if we were just adding things. This was my first sign that we were registry freaks! We told her it was our first time but that we did have plenty of things on there, not to worry (and a couple of duplicate things like seeing a pizza cutter and then finding a better one a little while later, oops). She was borderline giving us a hard time that we wouldn't have very many things on our registry until she printed it out. She came back and said, "you did all this tonight? seriously?" to which we said yes. Apparently it was four legal sized pages of stuff in a little under two hours. What can I say? Maybe it was my hunger because of the crap appetizers and the fact that I didn't have a fat glass of wine in my hand or maybe it's the fact that I don't have to debate the merits of blenders with my fiance for ten minutes before we scan something. It's not rocket science and it's all online for your editing pleasure!

So I guess the moral of this story is that we (potentially this is more me since I was the primary decision-maker) are, apparently in the eyes of Macy's, freaks for being able to walk into a store and know what we want. How crazy is that?