Revenge of the Registry

It has been one month of marital bliss.  One month since our pyrotechnic cupcake wedding cake.  One month since we sipped champagne on a beach in France.  Now that we are relaxed and rested after so much planning and partying, Fab and I decided it was time for an adventure.

And that adventure would be...the gathering of our gifts from our wedding registry.

Shhh....we're huntin' wedding gifts

You may recall my previous rant cultural experience post regarding wedding registries in France.  In case you are a newcomer and don't have much time to read said post before your boss comes back in the office, lemme bring you up to speed.  We registered at BHV/Galeries Lafayette.  It took us two Saturdays to get a list put together because you have to physically go in the darn store and write down what it is you want.  You also have to get the lovely customer-oriented staff to help you write down what you want by giving you item numbers.  They lost one of our lists, so we had to go back for more madness.  We finally got our list up, but it was far from complete because we just couldn't take anymore of the insanity fun.

People gave generously to our little love nest.  They gave us money to spend liberally and some purchased actual gifts.  Yet those purchased gifts never arrived.  You see, unlike in the States, where gifts are sent once purchased to the address of your choosing, in France, you must walk into your registry's establishment and either buy the gifts using your special little wedding registry card or tell them that you want to have them delivered.  At this point, my blood pressure started to rise a little bit...I did NOT want to go back to the damn store.  I did NOT want to hang out with the Chinese, Japanese, American, Russian tourists fumbling over themselves in the store.  I did NOT want to go during the soldes because crowds freak me the heck out.  #firstworldproblems  Believe me, I know.

I will say that it is nice, that even though a friend bought me a gift, I have the right to shift the gift amount over to other more necessary household items.  For example, say Sally Sue bought me a foot bath.  I love Sally Sue's gesture, but I kinda need a nice frying pan instead.  I can take the 39 Euros that Sally Sue spent on the foot bath and use it towards my 45 Euro frying pan.  Tada!  Frying pan procured!

Anyhow, we get to the store and decide we want to get some espresso cups first.  We go to the stand where we saw our fave espresso cups and inquired within.  They don't have access to registries, and therefore cannot tell us which espresso cups we asked for.  *sigh*  We look up our list on the Internets via the iPhone.   No reference numbers.  Just "espresso cups...6"  *big sigh*  Then, just as we were making our decision and waiting for someone to help us, the manager of said stand told one of her younger colleagues to help us after sensing our body language.  Her younger colleague responded that she didn't have to help us because her other colleague was helping us...but she was busy.  So she was just gonna stand there and look pretty.  At this point, my butt was already on the down escalator in a rage because it was just too much stupid for an espresso cup.

One hour later, and no wedding gifts yet purchased, we went to go print out our list so that we could have the reference numbers.  Logically, the wedding registry department was not in the home department but in the women's fashion department...across the street and through several clusterf**ks of tourists.  Those are 20 minutes of my life that I will never be able to get back, dodging tourists and perfume ladies, major couture hauls in big ol' bags carried by Chinese men and children playing on escalators.  I really needed a drink.

We make it back to the home section of Lafayette, and finally felt like we were getting somewhere.  Le Creuset pot...done.  Pans...done.  Espresso machine...done.  Food processor...done.  OMG we have loot!  We thought about having our gifts delivered because we could.  But the nice saleslady informed us that 1) due to the vacation period, we may not get our gifts before 2 weeks and 2) given that it was vacation season, people had left before resolving a huge system problem and that the gifts may not even show up.  Oh France...

At the end of the day, we bought 5 items in about 2.5 hours.  Talk about some darn efficiency.  As Fab and I were discussing this adventure later on, he remarked, "it shouldn't be easy for you to buy goods.  Otherwise, the economy would be doing too good."  His sense of irony is definitely one of the reasons I married him.