Are Wedding Showers Becoming Obsolete?

SP29

I agree, I don't see showers going obsolete. 

I enjoy attending them. I do agree that there is a "nice" way of doing them (the "aww" spending time with close family and friends way) and a tacky way (100+ people, greenback showers, expensive items, etc). 

I also enjoy couples' showers. I've only been to one, but it was great! 

novella1186

Guys. We've been quoted. 

JCbride2015

lyndausvi

rcher912

mlg78

Dreamergirl8812

and me. 

Just another reminder that nothing we say here is sacred cuz the TK gods are always lurking :P

ETA: The TK blog took the story down!!!

thisismynickname2

Ooo, where were you quoted? I just got a puppy gif. Magazine or newsletter or something?

[Deleted User]

novella1186 said:

esstee33 said:

I don't think showers are necessarily going anywhere, and I don't really think they should. Just because couples are living together before marriage doesn't change the simple necessity of household items they may or may not have. Like, not many people just starting out have actually decent dishes and towels and sheets. You get the shitty, scratchy sheets in college because that's what's cheap, but they don't last. You get hand-me-downs and mismatched things and plastic cups from Target when they're on clearance. Showers are a good way to provide a couple with actually nice things that will last. 

This. I'm really excited for my showers because there's stuff we legitimately need. Our dishes are old ugly chipped ones on loan from FMIL and we're supposed to give them back to her. I still have stuff I bought at Goodwill in college.
Our bath towels are on their way out; I got them on sale about 9 years ago and some of them have holes in them, the hems have somehow come off so they're shredding, there's bleach spots for some reason, etc. I've never had nice pillows or nice sheets.
My blender is broken because it got dropped down a flight of cement stairs while I was moving. Some of our other kitchen appliances are old junky hand-me-downs. I've never owned nice pans (definitely registered for a couple copper-bottomed ones and I REALLY hope I get those!).
We own one lamp and I bought it at Goodwell for $4 because I thought it would be fun to spray-paint it a cool color (and I was right, but it's so old that we unplug it when we're not home because it seems like it could be a fire hazard).

I mean I could go on and on. We've been getting by with the old junky stuff, and most of it is just fine as long as it can function, but some of it is really falling apart.

I get what you mean about showers not being so necessary, though. I have a friend who just got married and had a full house full of stuff that was pretty new and nice, but she registered for tons of new stuff anyway because she felt like "redecorating and picking a new color scheme." So that cast-iron roasting pan had to go, because she needed a RED cast-iron roasting pan. That's the crap I side-eye.


^ THIS.

And my two cents on showers. My fiance andon't I held off for a bit on moving in together so we could save for the things we wanted and to get them at a decent quality level. I didn't want to have to carry an Ikea couch up 30 steep stairs and in 2 years take it back down and carry a new one up because the Ikea couch failed... I also hate spending money "twice."

Fiance was excited to register when the time came but when I asked what we would register for (we had 97% of the basics and also have a small studio apartment so no room for stuff) we couldn't come up with too much.

We were able to come up with a few things and we registered for them. I didn't put ANYTHING on my registry that we wouldn't have been willing to buy for ourselves. We now have about 50 items on the registry because most of the things we needed/wanted were higher in price and I didn't feel that it was polite to only have $100+ items on the registry. We continue to cut things off too as we re-evaluate, look at available storage space, etc.

novella1186

thisismynickname said:

Ooo, where were you quoted? I just got a puppy gif. Magazine or newsletter or something?

lol click on the link! Just the TK blog :P

themosthappy91

@novella1186 yeah the link is also just leading me to a puppy gif... which, you know, I love, but...

novella1186

themosthappy91 said:

@novella1186 yeah the link is also just leading me to a puppy gif... which, you know, I love, but...

Bahaha! I'm so awesome.

So... I just went back to the TK blog to get the ACTUAL link, and it's gone! They seriously took it down! WTF?!

Viczaesar

novella1186 said:

esstee33 said:

@novella1186 - Did you use your towels to dry your face after using any kind of acne cleanser? I bought new towels last year and started using a new acne wash right after that, without realizing that the cleanser would bleach my towels! So now the nice, new towels I bought like 6 months ago are fucked beyond repair. >:(

Damn! I didn't even know that could happen! Maybe that's what the spots are from. I hardly ever use bleach and I definitely never use it on colored towels so the spots were a total mystery to me. 

Yeah, benzoyl peroxide - which is a common ingredient in acne medication - bleaches some dyes.  It's a pain in the ass.  I find I have the least problems with red (e.g. bedding), but purple is hit or miss and anything tan or blue usually bleaches. 

novella1186

OK! Here is the link: 

http://blog.theknot.com/2015/02/10/hot-topic-are-wedding-showers-going-out-of-style/

No idea why I couldn't find it before, but yeah, it's a post on the TK blog and pretty much the entire thing just quotes this thread. 

levioosa

novella1186 said:

OK! Here is the link: 

http://blog.theknot.com/2015/02/10/hot-topic-are-wedding-showers-going-out-of-style/

No idea why I couldn't find it before, but yeah, it's a post on the TK blog and pretty much the entire thing just quotes this thread. 

This is all I can think of now:

novella1186

levioosa said:

novella1186 said:

OK! Here is the link: 

http://blog.theknot.com/2015/02/10/hot-topic-are-wedding-showers-going-out-of-style/

No idea why I couldn't find it before, but yeah, it's a post on the TK blog and pretty much the entire thing just quotes this thread. 

This is all I can think of now:

lol! First and only time I've ever been quoted on the blog, and I called my FMIL's dishes ugly. I hope FSIL doesn't ever check out the blog 

thisismynickname2

Man, you guys, I'm just stuck on the fact that the concepts of showers and registries should be separated! You can replace ugly old dishes with a gift registry without having a shower. GAH. 

But yay, you're famous ;-) 

Bubblegum5586

H and I had lived together for 3 years before marriage and I was soooooo excited to finally have matching silverware! I loved finally upgrading all of our crappy mis-matched stuff!

Psych819

My upcoming shower will be a great help to me and FI. We just moved in together and still need many things. We are hoping to get a good start from our shower gifts. 

thisismynickname2

Psych819 said:

My upcoming shower will be a great help to me and FI. We just moved in together and still need many things. We are hoping to get a good start from our shower gifts. 

Sorry to have to bring this up, but I believe proper etiquette is to not use any wedding gifts until after the wedding. They're not shower gifts, they're wedding gifts. People wouldn't be giving you gifts of household supplies unless you were getting married. 

Logic is, if for any reason the wedding is called off, you have to be able to return the gifts (or at least reimburse). Others may correct me if I'm off base but that's the rule I know. 

brian&elizabeth2015

As a 30 year old bride, I often feel silly or stupid registering for items because people probably think that I dont need ANY of this. The reality of it is I live in New York City so I don't have a microwave or blender or heck, even 2 pots. So I do feel kind of embarrassed asking for "normal" things but that's what registering is for, when you actually need stuff. 

[Deleted User]

I like showers. I like shopping for gifts, and seeing everything that the bride gets. 

Also, while FI and I live together, we are missing a lot of things we could actually use, and a lot of what we do have are hand me downs. We use old dishes we got from both sets of parents, old baking pans, my 20 dollar set of Walmart pots and pans from college, and cheap appliances. When we register, I'm excited that we might be able to get new dishes, new pots and pans,and new bedding, since we could really use all of that stuff.