Bridal Registry At The White House??

What’s the best part about being a Bride? Some might say the doting attention of your friends and family, others would say it’s that whole “finding your soul mate, being in love…..” I personally think it’s the registry :-) For this is the day when you abandon your sad, window shopping ways, enter that Crate & Barrel proudly and say “Today, I will stock my Dream Kitchen!” Ahh… like a kid in a candy shop with an all you can eat pass.

Registries are great for obvious reasons. Guests don’t have to waste time guessing; and the newlyweds don’t have to find creative ways to re-gift 5 toasters, 6 silverware sets and one hideous brown duvet cover.

But what happens when the Bride & Groom step outside the traditional registry boundaries and ask for something…. unconventional? A recent blog post from Always a Blogsmaid titled “Political Wedding?” tells the story of a couple who decided to use their registry to rally monetary support for their favorite presidential candidate. My first reaction was - Hmm, interesting. Kinda cool that this couple would choose a cause over their own materialistic wants and needs.

Then my common sense kicked in and I realized how utterly wrong and inappropriate this request was. To ask your guests to financially support a candidate that they may not personally agree with not only alienates their democratic rights, the disrespect it shows could put a damper on your entire event. You know the old saying “Leave Religion and Politics at the door”? Ok, for a wedding I’ll let religion slip by, but politics must be denied entry.

Donations in place of a registry is not a new concept and there are many tasteful and respectable ways to go about it. Asking for contributions to schools, humanitarian groups, church charities, disease research and even the “Just in Case” Divorce Attorney Fund are all fairly acceptable. The difference is, the person that donates to one of these causes will not be negatively affected by it and there’s little chance of them feeling like a sell-out by doing so. If you are Christian or Buddhist or not religious at all, donating to your friend’s Synagogue as a gift is not a compromise of your own principles and integrity. Why? Because your religion and her religion are not (or should not be) in competition with each other. The presidential race on the other hand IS a competition and one in which every guest at your wedding is intimately involved.

Alright, so giving money to a political party isn’t going to transform you in to a Fox-loving Republican or a tree-hugging Democrat; just like donating to a church won’t make you a Christian. But while your Religion may not change, your President might and no one should make that decision for you.

Shopping for wedding gifts should not be a moral dilemma. Take it easy on your guests and remember - when you finally realize how useless that breadmaker really is, at least you won’t have to wait four years to exchange it.

To find out more on how to make your wedding more charitable, visit ChangingThePresent.org

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