This Will Be A Day Long Remembered: Updates on Z and Wonder Woman’s Wedding
Published April 2nd, 2008 in A day in the lifeThis weekend, Wonder Woman and I went to Crate and Barrel to register for gifts for our wedding. [Editor’s note: it occurs to me that mentioning our wedding registry may seem tacky: a blatant ploy to extort presents. Clearly, that’s not true - if I was trying to get presents I’d point out that my birthday is Saturday. The long gaps between my posts aren’t because I don’t WANT to post; I just never know what to post about. In that way my virtual Underpants mimics my actual underpants - a lot of desire is in there, but it has nowhere to go. I digress, but my point is that sooner or later I just have to write about whatever’s going on with me. And there’s not a lot going on with me, so… registering is what I’m posting about.] I’m going to try and sum up the experience as succinctly as possible:
- Step 1 - Wonder Woman informs me that we need a new [fill in the blank]
- Step 2 - I point out that either:
- 2a: nothing is wrong with our current [fill in the blank]
- 2b: I don’t know what a [fill in the blank] is, then I come up with a sexually explicit use for it. For instance, Crate and Barrel offers a terrific line of butt plugs that, in a pinch, can be used to keep your wine from spoiling.
- Step 3 - I suggest that we ask our friends to buy us a Wii.
- Step 4 - I whine that I’m bored.
- Step 5 - Wonder Woman decides which [fill in the blank] we’ll be registering for.
- Step 6 - I inform her that her choice was the wrong one.
Rinse and repeat for several hours until someone needs a snack.
Yeah - we disagreed on a lot of things. And as I have for the past six months, during each disagreement I imagined myself ten years down the road, pointing out to my divorce lawyer that I should have seen this coming the moment she didn’t see how it would be totally awesome if we got the electric mixer in purple. So I can admit that I probably made things into much bigger deals than they needed to be. But I know I’m right about the forks.
I know she’s going to be my wife and I should try and find a nicer way of putting this but I just can’t - Wonder Woman picked the stupidest set of silverware in the joint. (There were actually two stupider sets, but one was gold and the other was black. Of the silver silverware, Wonder Woman’s was the silliest.)
First of all, the pieces are all very long. Like the length of my forearm. Conversely, Wonder Woman and I are both very short. From the look of the spoons, a bowl of Honey Nut Cheerios will now require a coxswain behind me yelling “Bite! Bite! Bite!” I’m especially looking forward to the day when I stab myself in the face because I’m not used to long distance feeding. I should practice by eating off of pool cues. [”Why is there a cork on his fork?”…”So he doesn’t hurt himself.” Thank you, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels.]
The utensils are also very narrow. The dinner fork looks like a chopstick with a bad case of split ends; any meal involving scooping will be served with a piping hot plate of futility at no extra charge. I’m going to feed Wonder Woman rice and peas until she stabs me in the leg.
Let me stop myself for a moment. It tends to be funnier when I talk about the mishaps, so I want to take a second to acknowledge that planning a wedding is pretty fun, in ways I never would have thought of. Take gift registering: one of the items we registered for is a dish rack. Normally not a big deal, right? But I’d have a hard time describing how excited I am for the new dish rack. I’m actually looking forward to doing dishes.
Or maybe what I’m really looking forward to is starting a family with a wonderful woman (get it? Wonder Woman?) and the dish rack serves as a symbol of that union - something that will belong to both of us equally.* It sure is a lot nicer to think of the dish rack in that way, since the alternative is seeing it as an indication of just how old and lame I am, and that even though I’m only going to be twenty-nine I’ve somehow come to a point in life where I can actually get a semi thinking of a brand new dish rack. Because if that were the case, I’d have to cry. A lot.
So here’s to our dish rack of unity!
*Yeah, right! Last time I checked, I have the penis. That shit is MINE. [Ed note: When I first wrote this, I meant it in the chauvenistic, “I own everything” sort of way; it’s the type of humor that I enjoy so much and makes my mother sad. Then I read it again and realized I’m making a claim on a dish rack. Move over, Archie Bunker. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go get quarters so I can do the laundry all night.]
Nope, that shit is HERS, gus!
Reading this post, I was reminded of the advice given by your brother and sister-in-law that kept Vejune and me from calling off our own wedding 6 months in advance:
Get drunk beforehand. Like, seriously… two cocktails at least.
Once you’re that lubed up, you could imagine eating your cereal with a platinum-plated toilet plunger and you wouldn’t fuckin’ care.
Thanks Big Brother and Thunder Lizard! You saved my marriage at the zygote stage!
Oh, and one more thing: Z, have you noticed that stores like Crate & Barrel pass out little “checklists” to engaged couples before they roam around the store with their little laser tag gun? That is the most sneaky, pernicious, evil fucking publication known to mankind, because it subliminally tells the ladies that they need the fucking [fill in the blank]s when the notion would not have otherwise occurred to them. You might as well register for public storage too, because that’s where you’re going to be putting the heaps of arcane kitchen gadgets and “good china” that you never use.
Not that that is my plight or anything…
Dammit, z! I decided to read this post at work and started laughing uncontrollably (”the dinner fork looks like a chopstick with a bad case of split ends” is awesome). Now my boss thinks I’m INSANE.
Honestly Z, I am totally disappointed in you. I give out a lot of advice, some of it is okay, but most of it definitely should go in the “in one ear and out the other” category. However, the “you better make sure to have two martinis before you go register for shit” is THE BEST ADVICE I’VE GOT. It would have made your day much easier and your post much funnier. The price for not taking my best advice — I am going to register you guys at Good Vibrations and send the registry to the WW side of the family. Anal bead necklace will be the first item on the list…
See, z? I TOLD YOU we should have registered for the martini glasses.
Let’s take a look at your registering experience with a view to helping you cut down on the number of steps, while making it a more enjoyable experience.
Here’s one suggestion:
Step one: Wonder Woman informs you that you need a new [fill in the blank]
Step two: You pretend to be considering the pros and cons.
Step three: You agree.
Step four: Wonder Woman chooses selects which [fill in the blank] it will be.
Step five: You pretend to be considering alternatives.
Step six: You agree.
Step seven: You go home and have sex
Rinse and repeat.
The forks sound great!
I could not stop laughing either.
Tooth Fairy is right.
3 of my coworkers came over to see what I was laughing about. I plugged the site as best I could (I’ll expect my commission by the 15th), but I doubt any of them will read it.
Any time you can work in a Dirty Rotten Scoundrels quote, you get bonus points.
Just stop laboring under the delusion that you’re going to have any say in the matter of what goes on the registry. My wife and I had a budget of like $15,000 for our wedding, and she still registered for a $30,000 BMW with the rationale, “you never know, it doesn’t hurt to try.”
Denis Leary has a good line about this, he said “I’ve been to Wayne Gretzky’s house, he’s got 5 MVP trophies. You know where they are? In the garage!”
nice! Thanks for the plug, Spidey. Every little bit counts. Though I’m sorry, I’m going to have to disagree with you and Toothie about the registry. Until I celebrate Bar Mitzvah 2: The Revenge, there will never be another time where everyone I know wants to spend money on me. To walk into that situation and come out with an ottoman would be a travesty. In fact, I think I feel a blog post coming on for next week - Z’s registry…
Tooth Fairy, your check is in the mail!
Isn’t the best part of registering the cool laser gun thing? You get to shoot everything you want. It’s all about playing laser tag or charlie’s angels in the store. Especially crate and barrell - lots of great furniture for duck and cover protection. If WW won’t play, invite me and we can pretend we’re in ALIAS (You only get to be Sydney b/c you’re the one getting married) while she picks out more impossible to use kitchen utensils that probably look really awesome on the table.
Things would have probably gone a lot faster for you if you just said “looks great darling, put that down and lets move on to the next wonderful and exciting thing on that massive list you have.” If you are anything like my husband - he still doesn’t give a rats ass about our plates and silverware - he makes me buy plastic forks and paper plates (sorry environment) and only uses the good stuff (rather, the normal every day stuff) when I forcefully dish up dinner for him.