In October 1999, I received a 6″ x 4″ postcard from Crate&Barrel that made me wonder - more than it should have, perhaps - about other married couples, specifically other married couples who had registered for the Martinique dinnerware set: a lovely, hand-painted montage of flowers and grapes, I think, that resembled the sort of multi-color design you might have painted at day camp before baking and glazing the plate for your grandmother.

The postcard alerted us that our choice in dishes - a choice many couples likely spent hours agonizing over - would no longer be carried “as a regular pattern in [C&B] accessory stores.”

City Wall Clock ($19.95) Made in Italy

We were given the following options: we could save on shipping charges by visiting the nearest C&B and buying all the extra Martinique plates, soup bowls, cereal bowls, unknown purpose bowls and tea cups we might need later in life, or we could tempt fate and call the C&B registry department (800-967-6696) if we ever broke or chipped a plate.

Frankly, I think we’ve used the dishes maybe 10 times in the almost two years since I’ve been married, even though we love them. We bought them thinking that they were nice, but not too nice, and it would be great to have something - but nothing too fancy or expensive, like china, which we would never use - to put out when we had friends over for dinner. But old habits die hard. And we, and our friends, for the most part, still eat off the plain plates we owned before we were married.

The postcard, however, made me wonder about all the other couples who bought the Martinique set. I wonder if they chose it, like we did, because it was more fun-looking than formal, or if they bought it because it brought out the blue in their kitchen floor. I wonder, too, what else we have in common besides dinner plates and salad bowls and wine glasses that broke after the first month, and if all of our homes, and our lives, would be stamped “bride and groom circa 1998″ if our wedding gifts were analyzed by a date machine for cultural and scientific reasons.  

Wedding registries are like shapshots, recording a moment in time showcasing our spending habits and our taste, as well as the aesthetic of our kitchen gadgets. They are long lists of wants and needs, but mostly wants. And their public nature probably reveals more about us than we really want people to know.

What follows is a selection of potential registry items displayed by a very real bride and groom to be. They could, however be any bride or any groom busily constructing the perfect home. At least while this season’s patterns remain in vogue. 

Let’s Go Shopping