I've been peeking

Ah registries, the best way to tell your guests what you really need (though the porcelain german shepherd is nice too) and also allows brides to know exactly what someone got them and when to expect it. There is almost an art form to peeking at your wedding registry. Some people talk about how it becomes an obsession, right up to the night before the wedding so they can see what they get to look forward to opening.

I am one of those people where I just ruin surprises (usually on accident), I'll be standing in the right place for no good reason when someone brings a present through the door, or outside the door when someone shouts out "Digital Camera" (true story very entertaining, got to the point I had to announce myself so my friends knew I was coming). But I never had this urge to snoop. Hard to explain, but while I like to come up with ideas in my mind of what could be happening (my pastime is Sherlock Holmesing what's gonna happen) I still won't actively look for it.

In comes the intoxicating territory of registry looking. I admit, I did look recently though I had a good reason. When my Future In laws were visiting a weekend back they said that we should pick out something we really wanted, we really needed a kick ass vacuum. Thanks to oodles of construction this place is a dust bowl and my cheap little vacuum had given its two weeks notice.

So we got a nice big one with lots of fire power (it isn't very cuddly though). After getting it out of the box and making head or tail of the special duster attachment I realized we had to take the other vacuum off our registry. Figuring we still had a month til the first shower there was no way anyone had even looked at the thing, I logged on and found that people had in fact already gone nuts and bought us stuff.

We get to look forward to some flatware (thank god, we really need it. Our dishwasher keeps eating forks), some serving bowls, a measuring cup, and the best thing ever a cheese slicer. Now we can have all the cheese we want in the house. Huzzah!

Anyone else becoming a registry peeker? Or become so addicted they can't be pulled away from the monitor with the keyboard stuck to her fingers?

Give me one of those

It's been beautiful out here for the past few days so on top of me wanting to spend every available second outside before it starts to overheat and boil ants alive on the sidewalk, a job interview, and my guy getting a nasty cold, wedding stuff has been the furthest from my mind until I saw someones trying to spread a nice rumor about Bed Bath and Beyond going bankrupt.

First off, it's not real, it's a big fat lie.

Second off, doesn't it just suck that there are so many pitfalls with wedding stuff. I thought registries were invented to make it all easier for everyone?

Like everyone else we thought first oh we'll just do Target and then maybe somewhere else a bit nicer to humour the fancier side of the family (not mine at all). Then after going through and a few days of debating the quality of towels, how well a knife would hold up, and if we really could wait for someone to get us Lego Indiana Jones or if we'll get it long before October, I hunt around and find out about the horrors of the Return Policy at Target.

Some of it seems to depend on the Target you go to. My friends all claim to have had no problems, but as the economy gets worse I am begging to wonder if they'll make it common at all stores to exchange returned merchandise with game store tokens (You can get a free 50 games of Pac-Man!).

We debated a bit back and forth, should we dump Target and put it all onto Bed, Bath and Beyond though there is one no where near my family, take our chances on Target, or try a new one at J.C. Penny. In the end we did a bit of all three.

I have heard through the grape vine that Bed, Bath & Beyond (though between my fiance and I we now call Best Buy, I easily get BB names messed up) has the best return policy, and with J.C. Penny you get a really nice organizational book (including some stuff to scrapbook with), it really comes down to what is best for you and what you'd want.

In the end we kept most of the stuff at Target, moved the things like appliances we really only want one of to BBB, and um gave up on J.C. Penny's after looking at the prices (we did try Sears but when the entire computer system was down and no one cared we gave up).

If we get a lot of doubles I suppose there's still eBay. Anyone need 10 bread makers?