Weddingbee boards

@ohheavenlyday: I agree with you!  I registered for beautiful china and only got ONE place setting!  Hopefully more will be purchased for my second shower because I'm going to have to go out after and buy them all (or ask for them for my b-day and Christmas for the next year).

Also, I REALLY wanted one of those cookbook holders, as I bake almost every weekend.  The holder is one of my favourite items in my kitchen!!!

Oh my goodness, definitely the KitchenAid AND someone bought it for us last week! If you think they are expensive in the USA, they are $650 in Australia??? WTH? If only plugging one in from the US wouldnt explode here and I would do it in a heartbeat!

The other thing is really nice sheets/pillows/doona etc - just waiting for someone to buy us the doona cover and we have it all!

@ohheavenlyday: You would be surprised, that was the first thing gone from our registry! The oldies love it!

@romanticone5555: Oh my goodness, I wish they had those where we registered! Then I would have to convince the Mister that we needed it because they are awesome.

For me it was the le creuset bakeware set (which my bridesmaids kindly purchased for me!) and the dyson.  We did not get the dyson at the shower, however we got a lot of Bed, Bath & Beyond Gift cards and they let you use those 20% off coupons on dyson vacuums.  We walked out of BB&B with a dyson last weekend for just under $200.  I LOVE it!

@ohheavenlyday: What china pattern have you chosen? Your own peers may feel silly buying just one place setting, but I can assure you that those of us who have formal china of our own feel quite secure spending the two hundred dollars for a single place setting -- or even the thirty dollars for a single cup-and-saucer if that is our budget. Although I inherited my mother's china, my sister got the silver so I bought my own of that -- and am still buying it piece by piece. It's about two hundred dollars per fork.

Eight is not the best number of place-settings though, if you plan to entertain formally. It is better to have settings for six or ten because those are the numbers that alternate smoothly boy-girl-boy-girl around the table while still letting the host and hostess take their traditional places at the head and foot of the table. I know the china houses tend to sell them in multiples of four, and the silver-boxes are made for multiples of four, and it makes me want to march into the C.E.O.'s office and smuck him upside the head for being out-of-touch with the correct use of his own product! For that matter, most of the place-settings aren't correct, either. Unless you are getting a per-place-setting discount over the per-piece cost, it is better to go for a soup-plate, a dinner-plate, and a salad-plate; because your coffee service needn't match your dinner service, and bread-and-butter aren't served at a formal dinner -- so three of your five pieces are wrong for formal dining and you don't have anything to serve soup in! Another reason for me to have words with the china-house's C.E.O.

@med700: Much as I love giving china, I don't give it for shower presents, and I imagine most of the old-fashioned china-giving crowd don't, either. Old-fashioned shower presents were restricted to expendables like tea-towels and potato-peelers; and smaller generic "necessary" heirloom items like doilies. Since gift-giving is an oblilgation at a shower, you would be embarrassed to think your guests had been pressured into providing china and other expensive items. Those things, I would have sent to your home so that you could receive them in private, and know that they were freely given.

@medsie35: Since I've always worked, baking on a regular basis didn't fit into my day very well UNTIL I got my Kitchenaid stand-mixer. It makes baking a lot easier and I can put together a loaf of bread or a sponge-cake with half the thought so I do it more often.

The things currently at the top of my old-fashioned household registry are four silver luncheon forks (I currently have six), and a sterling silver tea service. I imagine it will take me another ten years to save up for that one.

@medsie35: That's what we wanted as well.  We didn't get it but we received enough gift cards that we were able to buy it with the registry discount.  Score!