The natural progression of wedding planning dictates that somewhere along the way you should register with some big box store to take the fun out of gift giving. The first time I heard about wedding registries, I really didn’t believe it, what was the point of getting a gift if you knew what you were getting? It seemed to me that wedding registries took all the fun out of gift getting and giving. Had the old box shake to predict what gift was inside, lost its weight?
Of course, in my old age, I’ve begun to appreciate and understand the chochma behind wedding registries, but that doesn’t mean I’m about to play the game. My buddy tells me that there’s a reason everyone registers at Bed Bath and Beyond and that’s because they give you cash for returns. This of course boggles my mind, because if I’m registering for something I need and want, why on earth would I want to return it? But when I responded like this to my friend he gave me a speech that sounded more like a well thought out Marine landing strategy for Normandy.
He says that you have to register for more things than you need because many people want to see a choice. He also says to register for both big ticket and small items alike to give more of a choice. Then you can return unwanted items for cash, he tells me that prior to the wedding men don’t see the point in gifts and women are all about receiving items and holding onto them. Then my friend in all of his 1 year of marriage grand wisdom tells me that after marriage the roles change and it switches. I’m not sure I agree, or can agree, since I’ve never been married before, but I’d like to think that I’m better than just using complex strategy and comparative shopping to get the best deals on gifts. He said that almost everything any store has can be bought at Wal Mart, but since Wal Mart was ghetto most people don’t register there. He forgot that little tiny factor of mistreatment of workers and that whole thing of shutting down independent stores and farmers for the sake of enormous stores.
Maybe I’m being too moral? Maybe I should just use the cash cow strategy and garner the most points and get the cheapest stuff. While I’m at it, maybe I should listen to the few people who keep saying that the more you spend the more you make back in gifts on your wedding. Since when did a wedding become an investment, I always thought of it as the most important simcha of your life that you can share with family, friends and community – cheapening it to a cash cow seems a little low in my opinion.
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{ 34 comments… read them below or add one }
The wedding matters, because the more you invest in it, the more resistant you are to getting a divorce. All that stuff about being ashamed about admitting you made a mistake.
Sounds stupid, but it is true. The point is to make it *REALLY* uncomfortable to bail.
You should write a column on giving love advice to suicidal couples. You might save a few lives. Maybe not.
You should invest in your marriage, not your wedding.
You should invest in your marriage, not your wedding.
Bah! Invest in neither of those. Instead invest in a place to live….
In my personal experience I’ve found the opposite to be true. The people I know who spent 50-100k on a wedding were the same couples divorcing/seperating within a year. In my professional opinion, the more you invest in a wedding the more it shows you really wanted your one big day/party and weren’t thinking about the marriage at all- just about having a really super wedding.
We spent 3k on our wedding and were able to put a nice fat deposit on a house a year later as a result.
Big deal. I spent nothing on a wedding, nothing on a ring, nothing on a sheitel, nothing on supporting a shopping habit, and have more money than I know what to do with- even as a student.
What? You didn’t have a sheitel when you got married? What did your husband think?
Just elope! The only reason to get married is to have a wedding video for your future kids to watch and laugh their butts off at how young tatty and mommy looked, how funny the rebbe was dancing in positions they’d never seen before, and what stupid tricks everyone did to make the chosson and kallah *happy*.
Alternately, the couple can watch the video and remember how horrible the fasting and then dancing for two hours straight was, how awkward the yichud room first touch was, how irritating it was to put on a happy face for sheva brachos each night when you just wanted to wrangle your new idiotic spouse’s neck, and last but not least, how shocking it was to find that after waiting for months (or weeks if you’re really frum) to touch each other, after that first night of fumbling and trying to make anything fit, you can’t touch each other again bc just the act makes the kallah a freakin’ niddah and then she really becomes a niddah and you have to wait wayyyyyy too long to have make-up sex. Now, do you really want to remember those cherished moments of connubial bliss?
Wedding registries prevent you from getting 97 pickle dishes and a dozen fondue sets.
By the bye, we plan on ignoring the registry and making sure you get those 97 pickle dishes
1 for dills
1 for half sours
1 for sours
1 for Israeli
1 for garlic
1 for pickled tomatoes
and then another complete set for Pesach.
That’s twelve; 97 may be too many.
I never got the 25 grand for the actual wedding thing either. You can spend $1500, have it in a big backyard with nice tables set, and good food, and with a big family and some friends you actually want to invite, 100 people total. You have a speaker system set with whatever music you want played 1000 x better then a local band could ever do. Family can decorate, make nice ambience, candles, lace, the works.
Plus, it doesn’t have to be a shleppy, 5 hour affair. Everybody has a nice time and eat, drinks, dances and genuk shoyn. No less married, and you’re $23,500 richer. That’s enough to live a year in kollel, all expenses paid.
Or enough to put a good bit down on a house.
Or start the first kid’s college fund.
Or buy several tons of pinto beans.
Or you can save the $23,500 for son’s bar mitzvah.
Yeah, when my aunt got married, my grandfather spent 40k on the wedding. When he realized what it would run, he offered them the cash instead.
They took the cash.
So did they get married?
Oops. I said the story wrong. I meant they took the wedding.
Talk about ruining the punchline. I should stick to pissing people off on the hashkafa threads.
I really have no clue what people see in blowing 40,000 in one night on a copycat boring dress up party.
Modern weddings are absolutely ridiculous, bordering on insanity. Just a giant food orgy granting permission for 2 people to have sex.
Keep it simple and save the money for something important.
Somehow it irks me, when you use the word “0-rgy” in the same sentence as “sx,” but you are referring to food.
At least register for some nice china and silver. Many people really enjoy giving that kind of gift, and you’ll enjoy having it later on.
This whole minhag of spending a kings ransom on a single night is ridiculous even in good financial times. However recently, with the current economy like it is, many people who ten years ago would never fathom making a takonis wedding now see it as their only option.
If I may make a slightly of topic point. In my opinion, I see the whole Bork park social norm of demanding that all boys sit in yeshiva full time, regardless of whether they are successful in their learning or not, and any bocher that decides to go out and learn a profession is considered a “poyretz ol” (someone who throws off the responsiblity of Jewish life and law) as unsustainable and we are already beginning to see it fall apart at the seams.
Step into any touro college class room and you will find 1 or 2 yungerlite with the full chassidisha livush including biber hats and gartles.
It has become exceedingly clear to even the most extreme sects among us that the party’s over and daddy’s out of cash and if you want your life to be anything more then the wic/foodstamps/Medicaid dance your on your own.
Darling, y0u are talking about something of which you know nothing.
Boro park is chassidish. Chassidim in america don’t believe in long term learning for more than a small minority of their men. They mostly work in blue collar jobs and business.
You are trying to talk about the litvish chareidim in america. But you are so ignorant about the issue, that I really cannot see how you could have anything to add to a discourse which is so highly developed already.
You’re kind of “discovering” America in 2012.
Listen here sweetcheeks, I was born, raised, chedered, disillusioned, and college degreeed (that is so not a word but I’m on a rant so we’re just gonna plow right along) all with 5 miles of maimonides hospital. This depressingly uninspired life of mine precludes me from having an opinion on almost any subject on the planet. However sugerplum, I can whip your rude, patronizing, OTD ass on bp’s social minutia and what was or wasn’t required of ME in order to be considered a viable candidate for a top tier shidduch.
Whew..
Now your point that ” Chassidim in america don’t believe in long term learning for more than a small minority of their men. They mostly work in blue collar jobs and business. ” is correct. But my point is the youth of the chasiddisher community should be given the opportunity to educate themselves and get the degrees necessary to open doors in the corporate world so that if they have the drive and the talent can attain true financial success.
I understand that if a boy is learning well he should be allowed to try and become a Talmud chuchom, but if he is failing yeshiva he should be encouraged to find something he enjoys doing and pursue it 100%.
I don’t think I’m breaking any new ground here, this is just something I’m passionate about.
When I got married there was a “this for that” store nearby that allowed/made money I guess on exchanges of all sorts of things. I guess we paid something. They based values on all sorts of catalogues. So I got my much wanted pyrex measuring cup and mixing bowls for some peculiar music box. We still, bli eyin haraa, have the measuring cup over forty years later.
Batya, this is your aunt. That ‘peculiar’ music box was originally your great grandfather’s, carved from his own leg after a horrible donkey carriage accident severed it. I hope you’re happy with your pyrex.
Heshy-the way I see it, you can play the whole “getting gifts you know you’re getting” thing to your advantage. There are many things that I would LOVE to buy, but can’t afford and if I already know that people are going to go and spend all this money on my wedding, why not ask them to get them for me instead of the pickle dished they would pick?? It doesn’t necessarily have to be nice china or anything fancy (I get the feeling neither you nor your fiancee is into fancy stuff), but what if it’s some cool expensive hiking gear? You could mail a bunch of your friends and suggest they get together for some items you and your kallah would appreciate. Yes, it’s a little extra work (not as easy as a wedding registry in terms of logistics), but believe me people getting you gifts will appreciate the direction and be happy that their gift is definitely welcome. I’m sure there’s some entrepreneurial type among your friends who could deal with the logistics. I’m saying-think out of the box and try to see if you can make your wedding work for your unique needs. You’ve never been one to go with the masses anyway…
our wedding registry was on amazon.com and mostly included cookbooks, fancy cooking supplies we didn’t already have, and LOTS of camping supplies/board games/fun things. Most people didn’t opt to get us camping supplies which is what I most wanted, but I did get a neat air mattress out of it.
Best gift ever? A super powerful dust buster, and a cast iron pan.
I have a question. In Frum communities, is it proper to send thank-you notes to family members who send them either gelt or gifts for their wedding?
I have a very religious side to my family in Manhattan where the bride made everyone aware as to who they were registered with a store (Macy’s or something similar) as a part of the invitation process. We sent them a check and I also sent them a DVD video I made of our family history. I also sent the DVD to her Mother, (my 2nd cousin) and her husband. Well, after the wedding was over (we did not go), not a peep or a note of thanks for any of them.
Is this common in Frum communities or is it just their own personal gig of laziness (which I suspect)?
Most of my friends tried to write thank you notes, and spent many many hours over the next several months doing so. some of them probably didn’t end up finishing.
I am still waiting for a thank you note from a wedding from last March.
I bought them something I liked; maybe I should have kept it.
Partially agree that registries are cash cows which is why we have a honeymoon registry at http://www.mytab.co/wedding – so you know that your travel cash gifting will ONLY be used towards the honeymoon and won’t be cashed in. Also, when the couple post their amazing honeymoon on Facebook, you also know you were part of making that romantic trip possible. So i’m all for wedding ‘cash it in’ registries but with our site, at least you know your cash is really not going to be cashed in
I am an 35-year-old independent woman with everything she needs (from Target and two ancient t.v.s from 1994) and I’m getting married in March in Israel and a huge reception state side in May. I’m having a shower, because my mom’s friends insisted on it.
I thought about skipping all of this stuff and eloping. My fiance wanted the real deal in Israel (after seeing a very depressing picture of a couple who eloped).
I came to my own conclusion that I wanted a wedding after experiencing three losses of people close to me. There was so much sadness and is so much sadness in the world. It seems like every week my mom tells me of someone else from my small Jewish community passing away. So it made me think, who am I to deprive people of a simcha.
As for the presents, I registered at Bed Bath and Beyond and Amazon, but not for “enough” stuff, because I don’t need it. At Amazon I registered for a flat screen t.v. and an xbox 360, because my fiance really wants one. So I’m expecting the fondue sets and pickle things (one someone already gave me as an engagement gift – clearly a regift). My friend also recently told me about the cash for gifts strategy. I’m not interested (although I should be, money is money, but I’m not).
If we get gifts we don’t want, we will give them to charity or maybe try to sell them, but probably not.
Regardless, I am very much in love and feel very blessed to be getting married to such a wonderful man. And in the end, despite all the shtooyot, that’s what I think of every night before we go to sleep.
Simply beautiful. May you be zoche to build a Bayis Ne-eman v’yisrael, and be showered with brachos.