Anyone else read Dear Prudence on Slate?
Q. Wedding Shower Blues: Please help me out with some advice for my situation. My fiance and I just purchased our first home and had our first wedding shower. Neither of us have lived on our own and our registry reflected our honest-to-goodness needs. Now I'm struggling with ungratefulness towards my gifts. Prudie, we only received one item from our registry. I was so disappointed after the shower that I cried as I drove home. I feel like no one took the time to think about who I am as a person, what kind of gift I would appreciate, and what kind of needs we are facing in our lives right now. Now I am struggling with how to write my thank you cards (which were also a gift) when I'm not very thankful. I have thought of focusing more on the guest's presence rather than their 'presents' but I'm afraid that would be rather transparent. How can I say, 'Thank you, but you really shouldn't have' and mean it? How can I be grateful for extremely tacky and tasteless gifts?
A: Your first step toward recovery should be to accept that your friends are just friends, and not program officers of the Department of Housing and Urban Development. A registry is convenient way of pointing people toward what you would like, it is not a series of commandments. However, it's strange that virtually everyone ignored your wishes. So there are two obvious possibilities: Your wishes were outrageous, or there is something troubling about your relationships. If you were suggesting people buy you the Recency bed set, or appliances, maybe they all balked en masse. Usually that means a bunch of salad bowls and trivets come your way, so I'm wondering if some kind of prank was being pulled with the 'tacky and tasteless' gifts. But perhaps their tasteful gift is your tacky one. In any case, you pull out your thank you cards (and stationery is a perfectly appropriate gift) and write the most gracious notes possible. If they were trying to hurt your feelings, they should feel ashamed. If you were trying to hold them up to furnish your home for you, you should be.
A: Your first step toward recovery should be to accept that your friends are just friends, and not program officers of the Department of Housing and Urban Development. A registry is convenient way of pointing people toward what you would like, it is not a series of commandments. However, it's strange that virtually everyone ignored your wishes. So there are two obvious possibilities: Your wishes were outrageous, or there is something troubling about your relationships. If you were suggesting people buy you the Recency bed set, or appliances, maybe they all balked en masse. Usually that means a bunch of salad bowls and trivets come your way, so I'm wondering if some kind of prank was being pulled with the 'tacky and tasteless' gifts. But perhaps their tasteful gift is your tacky one. In any case, you pull out your thank you cards (and stationery is a perfectly appropriate gift) and write the most gracious notes possible. If they were trying to hurt your feelings, they should feel ashamed. If you were trying to hold them up to furnish your home for you, you should be.
