Your Cuisinart doesn’t impress Jung Lee. The impresario behind Fête, a full service event planning and design production firm in New York, has been executing customized bashes for such clients as Joseph Altuzarra and Jann Wenner since 2002. You can’t miss a Fête production: Invitations are hand-addressed, and no two seating charts are alike. Lee takes immense pride in her work, which is what made the sometimes lackluster registries of Lee’s clients that much more grating.
The care she pours into commissioning one-of-a-kind seashell-and-driftwood-encrusted chuppahs just to find an Oxo peeler on someone’s Zola? It kills her. Her clients have rented out museums and had rose gardens planted to line their aisles, but even the most well-heeled among them seem unable to resist the pleasures of a big box store scanner gun. “I’ve seen people put shower curtains on their registries!” Lee says. “Or a vacuum cleaner! I’m like, ‘For real?’ ”
Lee at least can claim a professional interest in appraising registries. The rest of us have no such cover. I have browsed the registries of Bravo TV stars and TikTok influencers. I have Googled the registries of people I haven’t seen since high school. If I’ve read your New York Times wedding announcement, chances are I’ve done some sleuthing and found your registry—to look at salt and pepper mills, to find out whether I think a bride who got married at the Plaza has taste or just a good planner, to assess whether I too need Schott Zwiesel glassware (I do).
Natalia Barber, 21, has also made a habit of looking up the registries of the semifamous. She was charmed to find that her local weatherman registered for the same casserole dishes that her mom owns. Ashley Niedringhaus, 35, takes an anthropological view. How else can she find out whose “table settings scream college dorm” or which acquaintances are rich? When New York Times columnist David Brooks married in 2017, Deadspin unearthed his Zola profile. He had registered for measuring cups. At the time, he was 55. Page Six reported that Paris Hilton registered for $60,000 worth of merchandise for her 2021 wedding; E! aggregated her picks.
When Arielle Patrick planned her own wedding in 2021, she went analog. To access her selections at Bergdorf Goodman, guests had to call the store’s wedding honcho, Ellen Klein, and either make an appointment to see the pieces in person or request a PDF via email. Patrick acknowledges that some found it frustrating, but she was resolute: “That was not something I was willing to sacrifice.” She didn’t like the idea that perfect strangers would be able to see inside her dining room with a simple Google search.
These are new problems, but our interest in other people’s stuff is a time-honored tradition. Wedding registries are at once utilitarian, aspirational, passive-aggressive, and transactional. The lists are a window into desires and tax brackets, and they include not just sheets or glassware but also, in one in memorable case, a Tesla. The results are an odd combination of intimate and shameless. Registries are an answer to the question, “What is the most expensive thing we can pass off as an investment in our shared future?”
The precise moment the wedding registry was invented is a subject of debate, although most histories credit the retailers for it. In the 1910s and ’20s, wedding guests gave the standard presents—silver, dishes, linen—but with no one keeping track of who had purchased what, couples were getting multiples of the same items. To streamline the process, department stores invited brides to keep standardized inventories so that no bride received a glut of fish forks on her doorstep.
Over time weddings came to be understood as personal expressions of couples’ love. The gifts that accompanied them had to match. During the Cold War registries went from being a perk of department store shopping to a widespread norm, which served both the practical and political needs of the nation. These were the 1950s: Self-sufficient nuclear families with modern appliances, Wedgwood china, and true blue American values were a national imperative.
T&C's Wedding Registry Picks
Matouk Classic Chain
Wedgwood x Sheila Bridges Harlem Toile Accent Plate
Slowdance Perplex Candleholder
Haruya Hiroshima Champagne Saucer
Rimowa Essential Cabin
In 2022 couples register not just for $490 four-wick Le Labo candles but for home renovations. Online platforms like Zola and the Knot let users list no-limit “funds” next to their preferred stand mixers, replacing the envelope-of-cash-at-the-wedding handoff with a frictionless alternative. One benefit of the new way is that it lets loved ones feel that their gift is contributing to something more substantial than an extravagant Seamless balance. The caveat? Retailers don’t have ethics clauses. One New Yorker recalls a friend who registered at a now defunct department store, returned the gifts for store credit, and spent the lump sum on new clothes. It was a brilliant gambit—and a bit of a scam. Lee does not approve. In 2018 she launched Slowdance—an online platform that helps couples curate registry selections befitting the Fête name. Lee received cash at her own wedding in lieu of gifts, something she regrets “It went to taxis,” she says. She is a diehard advocate of traditional registries, even as an increasing number of couples reject pewter picture frames in favor of open-ended asks. A recent Zola account I perused included discrete funds for a Peloton, a couch, a rug, a Bluetooth car receiver, and…IVF.
Patrick wishes people would leave a little more to the imagination. “I’d rather write a check,” she says, “and not ask what it’s for.” “A lot of things we do in all kinds of spaces are about broadcasting who we are to others,” says Samuel D. Gosling, a professor at the University of Texas at Austin. Registries in particular combine people’s ideas about themselves with their projections about their future lives. A set of champagne coupes is a signal.“ ‘Yes, we’re going to need a dozen champagne glasses, because we are going to be sitting on the veranda, sipping champagne, aren’t we, darling?’ ” Gosling imagines.
A few months ago I decided to browse Lee’s Slowdance registries. I admired decanters and salad plates. I did a sociological assessment of the glassware preferences of men named Ben. Lee’s picks are—true to form—a beautiful mix of the sublime and the practical. There are $20 tea light holders. There are also $125 tissue box covers and decorative planters that retail for $1,200. It was around midnight when I came across the profile of someone I’d known since middle school. We had lost touch; she once dated someone I had a terrible crush on.
I pounced, feeling the thrill that Gosling was describing—the exquisite pleasure of unexpected social intel. Her Instagram is private, but details of her wedding were scattered around the internet like breadcrumbs. I devoured them. I decided her husband seemed nice. I texted six people, appraising her choices. On the one hand I was incredulous: How had this woman, who liked to match her Longchamp tote to her tank top, become the kind of discerning bride who seeks out a platform like Slowdance? On the other hand, I wrote to a friend, “those black dinner plates? Ew.”
In the lead image, the model wears a Michael Kors Collection Balmacaan ($8,990) and Bucket Bag ($1,090); Roger Vivier Pumps ($2,095); Gigi Burris Millinery Bow ($365); We Dream in Colour Earrings ($135); Croghan's Jewel Box Ring ($18,750).
This story appears in the April 2022 issue of Town & Country. SUBSCRIBE NOW
Mattie Kahn is a writer whose work has been published in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Elle, Vogue, Town & Country, and more. She is the author of Young and Restless: The Girls Who Sparked America's Revolutions.
