Wedding Gifts

If getting married is a full-time job that lasts for one feverish month before the magical day, dealing with wedding presents is a part-time job that lasts almost as long.

It would seem churlish — downright rude, really — to say anything negative about wedding presents as a concept. They are tangible expressions of love from friends and family, many of whom traveled thousands of miles to hang around a venue for six to eight hours and, in a best-case scenario, eat some delicious food and visit with relatives they actually like.

And yet.

Modern American brides and grooms often wait until they're in their late twenties or early thirties to tie the knot. More often than not, they've already lived together, and already accumulated the masses of cookware and servingware that constitute what a household is "supposed" to have, according to some invisible consensus of great-aunts and family friends.

So when that fourteenth Crate and Barrel box arrives carrying a half-dozen beautiful lowball glasses (which perfectly complement the half-dozen highball glasses from four boxes ago), you can't help but marvel — just a little bit — at the system.

There are people out there in the world ... real, thinking, feeling, 100 percent human people ... who may have a half-dozen pots, pans and utensils for their entire lives. You now have a half-dozen types of spatulas, and you're thinking you could probably stand to receive one of those new, really flat silicone ones for dealing with eggs.

You are awash in goods. The living room is covered in boxes, and packing material, and cards and torn-open envelopes. A broad-shouldered tide of good will has washed its way through your front door, leaving behind the flotsam and jetsam of online shopping and old-fashioned department store registries.

Some of the gifts are the product of pure love, some of guilt, some of obligation, most of some admixture of the three. Some of the gifts that were never given were products of laziness, or anti-materialism, or hostility, or figuring (rightly) that coming to the event was gift enough. Or some other reason.

The bride and groom get to puzzle through — or deliberately not puzzle through — the cryptic and impenetrable maze of emotions and intentions that the gift pile can provoke. Wise ones don't even start down the path, but it's hard to avoid saying, "Hang on, why did Uncle Alan get us a $450 silver serving platter, whereas Uncle Roger got us a small glass gravy boat? Does Uncle Roger hate us? Is it because we inadvertently implied Cousin Ricky is fat at that bar mitzvah? Did his business implode? And since when does Uncle Alan have that kind of cash to throw around?"

Open the door on one gift, and you've opened the door to a mind-blowing process of analysis that can result in years of therapy.

That said, one can alternatively take the approach that the baseline gift — nothing — is just fine. And that anyone who wants to top that is wonderful, and if the gift happens to be particularly generous or thoughtful, super. And if it doesn't, no worries.

While assessing the impact of gifts, it would be a mistake to omit the impact of thank-yous. What initially seems like a formality quickly becomes a profound exploration of your own social network — a person-by-person accounting for dozens (or hundreds) of relationships that you've either nurtured or left fallow for the years leading up to the big happy day. Writing thank you notes isn't merely a matter of putting pen to ink; it's a matter of asking yourselves, "Who are we? And who do we know? And from where, exactly? And is that OK?"

That said, depending upon the size of the event, the organization/writing/addressing/mailing process can quickly assume colossal proportions. But then, seemingly moments after the looming storm has assumed Godzillaesque proportions, you bring in a database, stationary, and a truckload of pens, and it finally recedes into the distance. And you're finally left alone in your house, mulling over the stuff you've got, and eventually concluding: "Hey. It's just stuff."

Piles upon piles of stuff, from people who love and/or barely know you.

Mountains of stuff freighted with emotional baggage far beyond its surface appearance.

The word on the street is that eventually you figure it out, have some dinner parties, and get on with your life.

— James Norton (jrnorton@flakmag.com)