To China and Back!

Put your chopsticks away cause no, we did not actually go to China recently (or ever for that matter; it's on the bucket list). What I am referring to is registering for our fancy schmancy china set that we are going to use when we are old and sophisticated. Riiigghht. I'm not so sure about the sophisticated part, but we are almost certainly guaranteed to get old. It seemed only fitting for us that we should go the traditional route and add fine china to the list. I don't foresee us ever buying it for ourselves in the future and Nate and I absolutely love to entertain people.

My first thought when we were narrowing down where we wanted to register was to head straight to a big department store such as Macy's or Dilliards. I didn't invest much time in researching how registries work beforehand so I assumed that it was just something that everyone did. You go straight to Macy's, find the snootiest sales associate you can find, pick out your china, your 400 count egyptian cotton sheets, and your top of the line blender, and that was that.

Enter the wonder of the world wide web, and with it the quick, easy, and ohsomuchfun online registry. No longer did I feel like I was on a one way train to typical town; I had options! Pottery barn, Pier One, Williams Sonoma, Amazon, and even the store where you can never come out with just one thing, (Target of course!). We initially tried the in person registry at Pottery Parn and encountered a major FAIL. We enter on a Wednesday night thinking this will be a breeze. 45 minutes later we walked out having no idea what we just registered for, feeling extremelly overwhelmed, and had a hunch that the girl who was helping us had no idea what she was doing. 10 points for our intuition, because sure enough when we checked the online list several days later, it was very much blank. Yey girl at the store who didn't know what she was doing! A certain movie comes to mind.

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After this experience, we were officially terrified of the registry experience. Holy monkey was it harder than I thought it was going to be. I never thought that picking out a bunch of stuff that you wanted but didn't have to pay for could be so stress-inducing!

Online registry it was! A couple quick clicks and I could easily add things to the list or remove them at will. Oh the technological power!

CANNOT.STOP.ADDING.ITEMS!

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Slight problem. . .it is incredibly hard to register for china online. You can't get a good view of the pieces, it's hard to see if the colors really match with other items, and it can be so confusing!

"o.k so I have 12 sets of 6" butter plates, and then 12 sets of the saucer dishes and then I need to add the salad dish, but wait which size is that, 6" ok, but . . huh, that's the same size as the butter dish, sooo what's the difference? Well let me just add those anyway (click), oh, crap I wanted 12 not 122!"

Ughh, you get my point. We had to give the in store registry a second shot. We went to Bed Bath and Beyond to grab some items today and we passed right by their bridal registry section. Huh, I noticed, they have a lot of options with china and stemware, same brands as the big bad department store, well, we're here, let's take a look.

I eat my words about the evils of in-person registering. It was so much fun ya'll! The associate, Amber, who helped us, made the process go so smoothly. She was at the ready with suggestions and directed us to look around and see what caught our eyes. Nate liked one pattern, I liked another, hmm what to do?

Nate's favorite: The Crestwood Platinum Dinnerware by Noritake

My Fav, which was much more girly than his choice: The Parchment Dinnerware by Mikasa

Ooooo, pretty flourishes and swirls, yes please.

I had been inspired by a post by Miss Seashell over at weddingbee who had mixed two patterns together and the results were fantastic! I knew this would be the perfect solution for us. Our two favorites look like they were made for each other. A few decisions and an adorable bird napkin ring later, here were the results:

A perfect pairing!!! We were both really happy with the compromise and both very pleased with the results. The bird napkin ring has to be one of my favorite elements, it adds a little french country to the set and really speaks to our personality; traditional with a twist. I am looking forward to using these dishes for years to come on holidays and other special occasions.

It would be tempting to say that I am reformed on my idea that registering in the store is not so bad after all. We really enjoyed doing this together. But, just to keep my sanity, I think I'll stick to the click click aspect of the internet for all our other items. More on those other items later!

Did you conquer your registry demons? Or perhaps you were the lucky duck who conquered the scary in store scanner? If you're not to the registry point yet, are you looking forward to it?

*All photos unless otherwise noted were taken by moi!