For those who are wondering, we’re still in the process of registering. We’ve got a partial registry at Target so far, and by the end of the week, we’ll also be registered at Robinsons-May.

(It’s been kind of tricky, since we already have a lot of the things people tend to register for. You know, toasters and stuff. So we’re trying to choose things we haven’t gotten around to picking up, or things that are worth replacing with newer/better equivalents.)

We keep talking about registering at Fry’s, but we’re not sure they’d even have a wedding registry!

Remember the song “How’s it Gonna Be” by Third Eye Blind? When it was new, a lot of high schools apparently chose it for the prom theme, proving that teenagers don’t actually listen to the lyrics (it’s a breakup song), which should mitigate parental concerns about explicit lyrics.

Anyway, Katie and I were talking about this the other day and started tossing around titles of songs that would be just plain wrong to play at a wedding reception.

  • You Oughta Know (Alanis Morissette)
  • Paradise by the Dashboard Light (Meat Loaf)
  • Song for the Dumped (Ben Folds)
  • Closer (Nine Inch Nails)
  • Brick (Ben Folds Five)
  • Playboy Mommy (Tori Amos)
  • Breakfast at Tiffany’s (Deep Blue Something)
  • Anything But Down (Sheryl Crow)
  • Back to Good (Matchbox 20)
  • Me and a Gun (Tori Amos)
  • Anything by Liz Phair
  • Best I Ever Had (Grey Sky Morning) (Vertical Horizon)
  • Guys Like Me (Aimee Mann)
  • Anything by Evanescence or Linkin Park
  • Melanie (“Weird Al” Yankovic)
  • Almost anything by They Might Be Giants
  • Don’t Stand So Close to Me (The Police)
  • Eleanor Rigby (The Beatles)
  • I Touch Myself (The Divinyls)
  • Anything by Rammstein
  • Gollum’s Song
  • Anything by the Chipmunks
  • I Don’t Like Mondays (Boomtown Rats)
  • Anything by Nirvana
  • I’m So Happy I Can’t Stop Crying (Sting)
  • King of Pain (The Police)
  • I’m Still Remembering (Cranberries)
  • One More Minute (“Weird Al” Yankovic)
  • If I Were Brave (Shawn Colvin)
  • Jumper (Third Eye Blind)
  • Yesterday (The Beatles)
  • Roxanne (The Police)
  • I’ll Never Tell (Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Once More With Feeling)
  • Anything by Garbage
  • Positively Fourth Street (Bob Dylan)
  • Torn (Natalie Imbruglia)
  • Taxi (Harry Chapin)
  • The Freshmen (Verve Pipe)
  • Power of Goodbye (Madonna)
  • Waitress (Tori Amos)
  • Total Eclipse of the Heart (Bonnie Tyler)
  • Uninvited (Alanis Morissette)
  • Unsent (Alanis Morissette)

We’re not sure about The Highwayman and Lady of Shalott (Loreena McKennit), since the subject matter is wrong, but they’re quiet and unobtrusive.

This is an open list – feel free to add your suggestions! The idea is not just to get something that isn’t appropriate, but something that’s especially inappropriate (breakup songs, twisted relationships, put-down songs, etc.)

I am honestly in complete confusion as to why all wedding vendors and personnel seem to feel it’s necessary to rebuke us for not arranging everything a year in advance. Sure, we procrastinated like nobody’s business, but we were already getting this at T minus 6 months. What do they do with people who have 6-month engagements, tell them they’re really getting off to a bad start planning their lives together? It’s not like we can say, “Oops, my bad, we’ll remember that for next time.” This is a field where what everyone says doesn’t always go, and the 10% who don’t follow the rules seem to have the best time and come out the least scathed. So it’s natural that I, as one of the 10% in most other arenas, would attempt to bull my way through this. In retrospect, that was a bad move, if only for the flood tide of social censure I’m enduring just because bouncy people make me nuts and I like to avoid them.

But anyway. Do these people not talk to each other? Do cake decorators never speak with dress shop attendants and find out that all their wedding planners give people the same advice? More importantly, do they think this is in any way endearing to the customer, or that it’ll make them want to recommend the facility to someone with better planning skills? Especially when the customer is sick to death of being told how insufficient she is and just wants the thing around the corner to knock her cold when it comes at her out of the promised nowhere so she can wake up after the wedding and go on with her life.

We started out with the intent of not doing everything ourselves, since that way lies madness and lack of free time. Then we found out just how annoying 90% of wedding vendors are and how little patience we have with large doses of that, and switched to coordinating everything ourselves. When it became obvious that if we continued in this vein we wouldn’t be having a wedding, we sucked it up and started vendor-hunting again. Only this time, they’re twice as annoying since all of them are now programmed with the auto-repeat loop of “It’s just around the corner! You’re really cutting it close! It’s almost here! It’s really down to the wire! It’s just around the corner!” and have been for the last six months. I’m beginning to feel my eye twitch whenever someone says any of the above.

This includes my family. Continue reading