My boyfriend and I got engaged between Christmas and New Year’s and being the practical, career-driven type, we sensibly decided to punt the whole wedding planning effort until we had lined up our next jobs (we’re both in transition this year). Meanwhile, all of our friends and loved ones who have been waiting expectantly for years for us to decide to get hitched couldn’t wait to send cards with well wishes and in some cases, engagement gifts.
This is where announcing an engagement without a solid idea of when you’re getting married becomes a problem. People start to ask when you’re getting married, (we’ll be the first to know that, thank you) where you want to honeymoon, (seriously? Can’t we find new jobs first?) and, worst of all, when you’re having kids (come on! We have a cat and 8 plants, isn’t that enough?).
So when my mother asked us, on behalf of a friend, whether we had decided what kind of crystal we’d like, my fiancé and I decided to look online at Macy’s and Bloomingdale’s to see what fabulous options we had to choose from. First we had to get past the fact that the Macy’s website totally sucks and for some reason groups crystal by what’s on sale rather than by designer or by type of design. We attempted to browse their selection online but quickly realized that it was one of those “if you don’t know what you’re looking for, you aren’t going to find it” web experiences which is always frustrating.
The Bloomingdale’s website was much better organized, though we realized that we had no idea what the pieces actually looked like, as lighting and the inability to zoom in on many of them left us wondering whether the crystal was really “smoky” or whether the picture was taken in low light.
After about an hour of poking around on the web, we decided that we really needed to visit the crystal department of these stores to see and hold the actual pieces. We knew that we both liked the wine glasses with big bowls (suitable for snobbishly swirling red wine and checking out its “legs”) and thought that a decorative stem would be preferable to the classic cut crystal goblets our mothers had.
So after work we set off for the crystal department of Macy’s. We reasoned that since Macy’s had recently purchased every single other department store in the United States except Bloomingdale’s our wedding guests might have better access to it than to Bloomie’s. Plus, I’m from the South and thought that there was something pretentious about registering at Bloomingdale’s. Most of the weddings down South that I’ve been to register at sensible places like Belk or Target – Crate and Barrel is also acceptable though they have low market penetration outside of big cities like Raleigh and Charlotte. Plus, Bloomingdale’s calls up visions of fur-clad women with names like Mitzy and Buffy who have lunch at the Waldorf before stopping by Bloomie’s to pick out 1000 count Egyptian Cotton sheets for the maid’s quarters.
I’ll probably have to revise this particular view of Bloomingdale’s in light of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, but I’ll get to that later. First, the crystal department at Macy’s.
After the holiday crush I experienced last month, our Monday night expedition to Macy’s was refreshingly calm. A few folks wandered through, glancing at the post-Christmas, Post-Martin Luther King Day, Pre-President’s Day sale items. It was freezing outside, so most of them were probably just been getting out of the cold, I don’t think the sales were that great.
We rode the escalators up past the perfume and handbags, past the non-designer women’s apparel, through the designer women’s apparel, past the shoes, the bedding (oops, almost thought crystal was in with bedding but it’s SO NOT), though the children’s clothes and at last to the tippy-top of Macy’s where we found the crystal and china section.
The wedding and gift registry kiosk was helpfully located in the center of the crystal/china department and all the other couples were armed with a barcode readers and were scanning in items for their registries. My fiancé and I, only planning for a reconnaissance mission, decided to skip the scanner and look at what Macy’s had to offer before committing to a registry there.
One thing I’ll say for Macy’s brick and mortar is that it’s much better organized than the web site. We browsed various designers: Waterford, Swarovski, Vera Wang for Waterford, Kate Spade for Waterford… I found myself reminiscing about when Kate Spade and Vera Wang had only designed apparel, ah, the good old days. We found some hideous things and some beautiful things, some reasonable things and some crazy-expensive things ($200 for a wine glass? Are you sure it’s not made of diamonds?) when suddenly we found… murder weapons.
This is where announcing an engagement without a solid idea of when you’re getting married becomes a problem. People start to ask when you’re getting married, (we’ll be the first to know that, thank you) where you want to honeymoon, (seriously? Can’t we find new jobs first?) and, worst of all, when you’re having kids (come on! We have a cat and 8 plants, isn’t that enough?).
So when my mother asked us, on behalf of a friend, whether we had decided what kind of crystal we’d like, my fiancé and I decided to look online at Macy’s and Bloomingdale’s to see what fabulous options we had to choose from. First we had to get past the fact that the Macy’s website totally sucks and for some reason groups crystal by what’s on sale rather than by designer or by type of design. We attempted to browse their selection online but quickly realized that it was one of those “if you don’t know what you’re looking for, you aren’t going to find it” web experiences which is always frustrating.
The Bloomingdale’s website was much better organized, though we realized that we had no idea what the pieces actually looked like, as lighting and the inability to zoom in on many of them left us wondering whether the crystal was really “smoky” or whether the picture was taken in low light.
After about an hour of poking around on the web, we decided that we really needed to visit the crystal department of these stores to see and hold the actual pieces. We knew that we both liked the wine glasses with big bowls (suitable for snobbishly swirling red wine and checking out its “legs”) and thought that a decorative stem would be preferable to the classic cut crystal goblets our mothers had.
So after work we set off for the crystal department of Macy’s. We reasoned that since Macy’s had recently purchased every single other department store in the United States except Bloomingdale’s our wedding guests might have better access to it than to Bloomie’s. Plus, I’m from the South and thought that there was something pretentious about registering at Bloomingdale’s. Most of the weddings down South that I’ve been to register at sensible places like Belk or Target – Crate and Barrel is also acceptable though they have low market penetration outside of big cities like Raleigh and Charlotte. Plus, Bloomingdale’s calls up visions of fur-clad women with names like Mitzy and Buffy who have lunch at the Waldorf before stopping by Bloomie’s to pick out 1000 count Egyptian Cotton sheets for the maid’s quarters.
I’ll probably have to revise this particular view of Bloomingdale’s in light of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, but I’ll get to that later. First, the crystal department at Macy’s.
After the holiday crush I experienced last month, our Monday night expedition to Macy’s was refreshingly calm. A few folks wandered through, glancing at the post-Christmas, Post-Martin Luther King Day, Pre-President’s Day sale items. It was freezing outside, so most of them were probably just been getting out of the cold, I don’t think the sales were that great.
We rode the escalators up past the perfume and handbags, past the non-designer women’s apparel, through the designer women’s apparel, past the shoes, the bedding (oops, almost thought crystal was in with bedding but it’s SO NOT), though the children’s clothes and at last to the tippy-top of Macy’s where we found the crystal and china section.
The wedding and gift registry kiosk was helpfully located in the center of the crystal/china department and all the other couples were armed with a barcode readers and were scanning in items for their registries. My fiancé and I, only planning for a reconnaissance mission, decided to skip the scanner and look at what Macy’s had to offer before committing to a registry there.
One thing I’ll say for Macy’s brick and mortar is that it’s much better organized than the web site. We browsed various designers: Waterford, Swarovski, Vera Wang for Waterford, Kate Spade for Waterford… I found myself reminiscing about when Kate Spade and Vera Wang had only designed apparel, ah, the good old days. We found some hideous things and some beautiful things, some reasonable things and some crazy-expensive things ($200 for a wine glass? Are you sure it’s not made of diamonds?) when suddenly we found… murder weapons.
We spotted them at the same time, snuck in among the crystal stemware. We picked them up and looked at each other laughing, “Oh my god! You could kill someone with this!” The gravity of the situation was immediate (plus they were really heavy) as we realized that not only could we register for pretty things but we could also register for… dangerous things.We retraced our steps around the crystal section picking up heavy objects and remarking to each other, “Hey this could be a murder weapon too!” By the end of our shopping trip we had found a few crystal goblets that we would consider registering for and many more potential murder weapons. It was fun.
We left Macy’s without holding one of the snazzy barcode readers, and tonight we’re going to check out Bloomie’s (fur-clad Buffies notwithstanding). I can’t help but anticipate finding murder weapons more than finding that perfect crystal goblet. I hope planning the rest of the wedding is this entertaining!
