What do you get the couple that has everything? Funny you should ask…
This week I read that lockdown has caused a hitch in the wedding registry industry. Which is, of course, awful for those employed in it. But also, for the rest of us, maybe a little brilliant? The average amount guests spend on a blender or bread-maker for the acquisitive couple has soared to around £70. Family members are expected to shell out more than £90.
It’s not even principally the price tag that irks me, but the charade of helping to “set up home” for a couple who, on average, shacked up half a decade previously. More than enough time to sort themselves out with a set of matching wine glasses. I’d like to propose a registry revolution. Gift lists should be reserved for those milestones that actually necessitate an overhaul of your accumulated clobber. By this definition, and with extreme reluctance, I will grant baby showers license to endure.
Weddings can continue with my wholehearted blessing just without their redundant registry, which might, instead, be reassigned to the couple’s now mandatory move from city to countryside around a decade on.
After all, it’s becoming every bit the universal landmark event. Accountancy firm PwC forecasts that London’s population will fall this year – a first in more than 30 years. When these former residents of Highbury Fields and Wood Green unpack their boxes, they will find that the cappuccino KeepCups, teenytiny trainer socks and “shower resistant” jackets they once prized are almost completely pointless for wintering in places that aren’t merely named after nature, but are actually impacted by it.
Nearly six months after ticking this cliché off my own life-list, I’m experiencing an unexpected desire for a complete overhaul of all my stuff. There are myriad things I now covet with an urgency far greater than the mere “meh” I felt when contemplating a new knife set or soup terrine for my married life. Never a Bridezilla, I’m suddenly a Relocation-rex. I want a registry and I want one now…
1 x Aga (principally to gaslight those guests who procrastinate their purchase until everything else on the list has been taken).
1 x boot rack (priced perfectly for a distant cousin).
1 x chest freezer (ideal for the passiveaggressive relation).
1 x dog shower for the garden (yes, I’m familiar with hoses, this is a dream registry…).
1 x king-size electric blanket (one you can set to different temperatures on each side, so we can snore in our own separate climactic zones… Heaven).
Fleeces (in infinite quantities and forms: inside my wellies, gloves, tights…).
1 x greenhouse (complete with battered Lloyd Loom chair and place to perch a book and Thermos).
1 x hot bath (lockdown’s last remaining luxury, and our ropy rural heating system just cannot muster one. Weep for me).
4 x in-seat heaters (like a spa, but in your car).
Limitless x jam jars (need of these increases inexplicably, yet exponentially, in the countryside).
Ditto kindling (always required, always running low).
Ditto log baskets (focus of all my current lusts. What has become of me?).
Magazine subscriptions (mourning the 30-second walk to a corner shop). Newspaper delivery (ditto). Potter’s wheel (My creative side will be rekindled by nature. Any time now). Quilts (All of them. Everywhere). Ride-on mower (the new “little red sports car”).
Scandinavian outerwear (watching The Killing for wardrobe notes – should I be troubled?).
Torches (endlessly useful and oddly desirable objects).
You get the picture. PayPal donations also accepted. And, I know. It’s a big ask. But it would really mean the world if you could all just rally around, one last time, to show your support for me in sickness, in health and in Norfolk.