In order to do her job well, Mom had to learn a lot about china and cookware and linens and so on, of course, so as to help those blushing brides make good choices. And eventually she gave me quite a bit of good advice for making those same sorts of decisions when it came my time.

I realize that many brides now already own china, glassware, cookware, etc. well before they either say yes or pop the question themselves. Still, there are those who haven’t got anything, those who want an upgrade, and those who decide that a wedding is a great time to replace all those broken and mis-matched things. So I’m going to pass on a couple of Mom’s favorite tips for picking a china pattern you’ll love.

Traditionally, one chooses a single pattern and gets either eight (for informal) or twelve (formal) place settings of it. That’s a good place to start, especially if you have a dining room that seats twelve, and like everything to match. Just remember that none of that is carved in stone. If there are only going to be the two of you, you live in an apartment with a breakfast bar, or you regularly hold formal parties for fifty, it would be wise to adapt the numbers to your situation. If you hate it when everything matches precisely, look carefully for ways to mix and match. If you cannot ever see yourself holding a party more formal than a potluck again, feel free to nix the formal china.

Once you have an idea of how much you want and whether you need formal as well as everyday china, it’s time to start looking – and I mean looking as often as possible – at some of the patterns that appeal to you. Wander through the china department in a store, or Google manufacturers to get a feel for the sort of patterns you like. Whittle that selection down to a couple choices in each category, and then take at least a couple weeks to look at them every chance you get. After all, you’re going to be looking at these plates every day for a long, long time! You may find that after a while you get bored with the plain white plates with the narrow blue border that looked so clean and fresh the first time you saw them, or your eyes may hurt after looking at that funky op-art border every day for a week.

When you find a pattern you truly love and don’t think you’ll get sick of, it’s time to do the most important exercise of all: the scrambled egg test.

Sure, that plate looks pretty with the pastel flowers all over it, or that quaint scene of country life. But does it still look appealing to you with a big ol’ pile of scrambled eggs on it?

Do the eggs make the plate look good or bad? Even more importantly, does the plate make the eggs look appetizing or not?

It’s easy to get seduced by a china pattern because it’s pretty and completely forget that it needs to showcase the food going on it. But in the longrun, you’ll be much happier with plates that make your food look delicious than with ones that look good hanging on a wall but fight for attention with the food itself.

I didn’t even know who they were, since I follow neither professional football nor beauty pageants. I had to Google their names to find out what the fuss was about. All the same, I wish them all happiness, as I do every couple who gets married.

The details are easily found from the dress to the menu (short ribs and a pizza bar), to… well, pretty much anything you could want to know and probably several things you don’t.

All well and good. Happy famous couple gets married, people want details.

And then along comes this cesspool of nastiness of an article.

Yes, apparently it’s worth the time of Chris Chase at the Yahoo sports blog Shutdown Corner to be offended that the happy couple chose to register at Macy’s and Crate & Barrel! What’s more, they had the crust to register for a gravy boat that cost a mere six dollars! Gasp! Horror!

As if forcing people to make the trip to Dallas on a three-day weekend wasn’t bad enough, the Romos then ask folks to buy them various home knick-knacks that they’ll never use and easily could have afforded for themselves? I suppose you have to get a rich guy something when he gets married, I just never figured it would be a six-dollar gravy boat.

How does Chase know that Tony and Candace won’t use that gravy boat? Maybe they like gravy with everyday meals. And what do you want to bet that had they registered for a six hundred dollar gravy boat it would have come in for equal disdain from the same source?

Look, I don’t care how rich or how poor you are. I don’t care whether you’re famous, infamous, or utterly unknown: register for what you would like to receive. If your family and friends are strapped for cash on a good day, be sensitive to that by including some inexpensive items, but don’t base your entire registry on the fact that your closest associates have money to burn.

And if you want a gravy boat – no matter how expensive or thrifty-minded it may be – go ahead and register for it. The fact that it’s on the list doesn’t obligate anyone to give it to you, nor is it a reasonable cause for annoyance on the part of someone you probably wouldn’t invite if you thought of it.

In fact, Chris Chase? I’ll make you a deal: you stick to talking about sports, I’ll cover the wedding beat, and then nobody will have to deal with my ignorance of football or yours of proper wedding etiquette.

I know the thought causes an amazing range of emotions from absolute joy to abject terror to… well… whatever it happens to stir up in you. Some people think gifts are the best part of getting married, while others would rather discuss having public rectal surgery than consider the possibility of more stuff in their lives.

Honestly, I don’t care which camp you’re in or whether you’re somewhere in between. This is not my concern. After all, I did my thing. It’s done. This isn’t about how you should feel about wedding gifts or whether it’s okay to want or not want them. This is about the practical aspects of handling this particular part of getting married. If you want pressies, that’s great. If you don’t want them, that’s great, too. But the fact is you will have to deal with the question, and with people who make choices that don’t necessarily match your wishes.

Here’s the deal.

1: You may express your wishes… but there’s a proper way to do it, and then there are not so proper ways. Never, ever, ever mention gifts on your wedding invitation. Even if what you want to print on them is that you don’t want presents, it’s not the right way to do it. You see, even though many of us think of wedding gifts as an obligation, they are not actually required. To put anything about them on your invitation is to assume that people are getting you gifts, and to make them feel obligated even more than they are by expectation. This is profoundly rude.

So how do you correctly get across the idea that you’d rather not get more stuff? How do you explain that you’d prefer a gift to your favorite charity in your name? Or even that you prefer cold, hard cash to china settings? First off, you don’t register for gifts anywhere. Then you tell everyone in your wedding party what your preferences are. If anyone asks you directly or asks a member of your family or wedding party, you/they can then say ‘Oh, Jared and Pansy already have so much, they’d really prefer a donation be sent to greyhound rescue in their name’ or ‘You know, Joe and Penny are in the market for a house and they could really use help scraping up a down payment’ or ‘Really, Jeff and Patty consider your attendance and support the most precious gift they could receive.’ As for registry information, it is passed the same way: by word of mouth.

2: Of course expressing your wishes does not actually obligate anyone to follow them. Sure, you told people not to give you gifts, but then stuff starts arriving anyway. It happens. As I said, gifts are not obligatory, but many people would no more consider arriving at a wedding sans a gift than they would think of skydiving without a parachute. That means you need to be ready to accept a few gifts even if you didn’t want them in the first place. Be gracious, send a thank you note, and if you really, really hate it, quietly sell it at your first garage sale or exchange it for something you can use. This goes for things that weren’t on the registry list you made, too.

3: If you do want gifts and choose to register, think about what is convenient for your guests as well as what you want. More and more of us have our friends and family scattered all over the country, or even all over the world. Consider registering online or at a place that has stores everywhere you have guests coming from. You can even register in more than one place… just try to register for different things at the different places so you don’t wind up with three times the towels you need!

Also make sure you have things in a variety of price points. Putting a few small kitchen gadgets or a couple terra cotta pots for your herb garden offers a welcome option to financially strapped friends and relatives. On the other hand, I consider putting a really pricey thing or two on the list something along the lines of that pony I kept asking Santa to bring. Don’t expect it to happen… but there’s nothing wrong with admitting you’d like a 3-D TV or some sterling silver. And you never know, a group of your buddies might just decide to band together to give you something you really didn’t expect.

After all, while I never did, some little girl out there got her Christmas pony.

4: While gifts are properly sent to the bride before the wedding, guests will bring gifts to the wedding reception itself. You see, the happy couple shouldn’t have to deal with the logistics of carting home piles of gifts when they may be in a hurry to catch a flight… or even just catch some Zs after the big event, and that’s why gifts are best given before the wedding. But goodness knows I’ve been That Person carrying a carefully wrapped gift into the reception. Someone will bring a check or a cookware set or a garden gnome with them.

Set up a table off in a corner to hold the gifts, and then make sure someone is keeping an eye on it at all times. The more public your wedding reception site, the more important that pair of eyes becomes. Our wedding was held in private on a spot that took some work to find, so our gift table was pretty safe. But if your reception is being held in a hotel or a restaurant, then safety first! It’s not the most common thing, but people have been known to come into someone’s large reception held in a public place and help themselves to some of those packages… particularly the slender envelope kind.

Oh, and resist the temptation to open your gifts publicly. Duplicate gifts (and these will happen, even with a registry and careful monitoring) will be opened in front of the people who gave them, and sometimes it’s hard to reign in a look of horror at a really, really unwelcome gift. There’s just too much chance of embarrassment for all involved.

After the party is over, make sure you’ve designated someone to cart all the gifts to a place where they’ll be safe and sound until you have a chance to open them at your leisure.

5: Yes, you have to send thank you notes. Even if you weren’t expecting it, even if you hate it with the fury of a thousand raging Pamplonan bulls, even if you opened it in front of the giver and squealed in delight, you still have to send thank you notes. Just get some pretty cards, make sure you have plenty of stamps on hand, use your nicest pen, and don’t let your new spouse off the hook. After all, these are wedding presents and two of you got married.

Keep it simple, mention how you intend to use the gift (or get appropriately vague if you’re ditching it at the earliest possible convenience), and do your best to appreciate the sentiment and effort, even if the outcome isn’t what you’d hoped for.

Here’s a question the lovely Leah sent to me a while back:

I have been enjoying MftB for years but only now have a pressing question for you: a friend of mine is getting married soon and, at the request of family members, will be doing a registry. But it’s important to her to register with a company that has green/sustainable options for a lot of her household goods and is also “blue” (the human rights/labor rights version of being green) in its business practices–nixing most of the big-box retailers. Ideally, she’d like to register with a store that is good to the earth and to its employees, especially on women and LGBT issues. Problem is, she’s not really sure what companies those are, especially not that offer a fairly wide range of products so that she doesn’t have to register 14 places. She is not interested in doing a ludicrous super-registry list, just some household basics to start their new home–linens, towels, some basic kitchen stuff, etc. Do you have any leads on some sustainable, high-integrity businesses that do wedding registries, or perhaps another way to put together a registry altogether?

In a way, Leah, this is a toughie – finding supposedly green wedding registries isn’t the problem, since there are environmentally friendly shops that let brides and grooms (and anyone, really) create gift registries. But going blue hasn’t quite caught on yet, even if it should.

Now you said that your friend doesn’t want to have to register at multiple stores, and I can completely understand why. For one thing, creating a wedding registry at one store can be stressful enough. Now imagine having to create more than one, and then having to keep track of them all! Not fun. So what’s a conscientious bride to do? Luckily, there are gift registry web sites that allow you to pull this item and that item from different shops online to create one mega registry.

The one that immediately comes to mind is http://www.myregistry.com/ (which even lets your scan bar codes in-store with an iPhone app, zow!). It’s basically a universal wedding registry, so whatever your friend wants from any online store or brick-and-mortar store with an online component can go on the registry, no problem. If MyRegistry one doesn’t do it for her, just Google build your own wedding registry and other similar sites will appear in the results. I think, however, that MyRegistry is the one that’s been around the longest and all the reviews I’ve read have been positive.

Blue producers? Green producers? Not a problem. With a universal wedding registry, every item on the list can be as sustainable and humanity-friendly and eco-conscious as you want it to be!

On the other hand, there is the sad tale of my sister-in-law’s friend who didn’t register. Every single guest at her wedding gave her a casserole dish, because, hey, who can’t use another casserole dish? The woman who just received eighty-five of them, that’s who.

Registries are expected these days, and couples are getting more imaginative with them, as well. Still, there are a few rules in place, and some advice I can offer. If you’re thinking of setting up a gift registry, look behind the cut for more information.

Think about what you can really use. Yes, there are places where you can register for a bag of Cheetos or an industrial wetvac, but is that really what you want for a wedding gift? Does it fit with your lifestyle or fulfill a need in your life? By the same token, consider whether you’re really going to take up outdoor cooking before you register for a top of the line gas grill, and whether you’ll truly use that silver tea service. If the answer is yes, go ahead. If it’s no, don’t bother.

Act as a couple. Discuss together what you want, what you don’t want, and where you want to register before you go. Present a united front, and get the job done more quickly.

Register for items in a variety of price points. It’s perfectly fine to register for expensive items, such as stand mixers, fine china, and and power tools. Just remember that not all of your guests are likely to be able to afford these high ticket items. Chances are you can use some wash cloths, hand towels, board games, or a shower caddy. Go ahead and register for those, too.

Never, ever, EVER include registry information on your invitations. As useful as registries are for both the happy couple and their guests, the fact remains that it’s perfectly polite and absolutely within the bounds of proper etiquette for a guest to choose to give no more than a congratulatory note. It’s also perfectly polite for a guest to choose to give something the couple didn’t register for. Including registry information is the equivalent of telling people a) that you expect gifts from them and b) what that gift ought to be.

The proper way to disseminate the information is to make certain everyone in both families and the wedding party knows where the registry is. Then any guest who wishes the information can ask the person they know best or are in most regular contact with. This is also a great way of passing the word if you’d prefer a donation to a favorite charity or cash toward a major purchase instead of household goods.

Be gracious no matter what gifts you receive. Look, nearly every couple that gets married winds up with a duplicate gift or one that leaves them scratching their head in confusion…or even horrified at the bizarre tastes of a good friend or relative. Whatever your private feelings, find a way to be nice about it in public. If you can’t love the gift, love the generosity behind it, and thank the giver for that.

But is the answer a wedding registry designed specifically for dudes? The Man Registry claims to be the worlds first registry that puts the Reggie back into registries. (Hey, you try making a good registry pun!)

TheManRegistry.com is the world’s first wedding gift registry for grooms. We offer hundreds of products geared specifically toward men. The days of men being content with dishes, hand towels, and linens as wedding gifts are over. With The Man Registry, grooms everywhere can pick out the barbecue grills, tools, bar glasses, and electronics they’ll need to start their new marriage.

Three brothers started TheManRegistry.com in 2007 when they noticed that many of their close friends and family were getting married, but too often were registered for gifts that were strictly geared toward the kitchen. Where were the gifts that the groom could get excited about? It was clear that creating a wedding registry tailored to grooms was necessary.

Some of the products listed in their Top Ten include the Black & Decker Cordless Screwdriver and the Pharos Science 3.5 GPS Navigator. Now, correct me if I’m way off base here, but I would say that nearly every single female I know has both a screwdriver set and a GPS. I can’t say I like the fact that The Man Registry is pushing these things as toys for boys and spreading the myth that chicks all lust after hand towels.

I guess I am just not seeing why an entirely separate man-oriented registry is necessary when many department stores have both linens and power tools. Why are grooms-to-be who want to set up a killer bar not simply adding shot glasses and cocktail shakers to their registries? Have their brides truly taken complete control over all gift options, or are they just looking for something to whine about? I feel like the guys who created the Man Registry said, “I know, let’s create a fake problem so we can make money by providing a solution!”

On a scale of one to ten, I would skip the numerical system altogether and rate this site as pretty pointless.

The Wedding Lens: At first I couldn’t figure out why the uploads were so dang slooooooooooow at this photo sharing service, but then I realized that the pics I’d chosen were absolutely HUGE. I’m talking file sizes that my free Flickr account would have rejected, so that’s a mark in their favor. It’s easy to create albums and name photos. At some point, however, it stopped accepting my titles and letting me add photos to sets. Hopefully, that’s just a bug that’ll be fixed soon. What’s spiffy is that your guests can upload the photos they take to your account. What’s less spiffy is the $49 price tag for six months of medium grade service and the fact that they want you to give them your loved ones’ e-mail addresses. Want to try it for free? Enter HOLYMATRIMONEY in the referral code box when signing up for “Gold” service. I’m still not sure what it can do that a Flickr group can’t do.

Wishpot: I found out about this tool when someone from Wishpot contacted me to ask if I’d like to be listed as one of their wedding experts–in fact, as far as I know, I’m featured in the newsletter this week. When you add the Wishspot button to your browser, you can add anything you want to your wish list, from dresses to stock pots to CDs and books. What’s spiffy is that it’s kind of fun and really easy to use, and you can add other Wishpot to a friends list to keep tabs on what they’re buying. You can also add a Wishpot button to your wedding web site registry page if you’re so inclined or even import your Amazon wish list. This tool is free and actually works, meaning there’s nothing particularly unspiffy about it.

Me.dium: I’m always deeply suspicious of any company that delights in labeling itself “web 2.0″ but I’m willing to give anyone a chance. This app pretty much tells you what other Me.dium users are looking at online, so if your, say, bridesmaids or FMIL have downloaded the program, you can all surf around together and chat about what you see. They can see what you’re looking at, and you can see what they’re looking at, so keep it clean hey! I couldn’t give this app a proper run through because no one I know wanted to download and install it. Then again, too much connectivity isn’t always a good thing–I think I prefer to browse alone. What’s spiffy is the idea–co-browsing while chatting through IRC is a pain. What’s less spiffy is seeing that CorvetteStudd is checking out Real Dolls…in real time.

Wishlist Butler: Created by Jean-Claude Eischen, this site doesn’t seem to handle any actual transactions the way most registries do. From what I can tell after creating a list and then granting my own wish (for a “stinky, hairy dog” worth $100), the site is merely a way for a wedding guest or other well wisher to see your gift preferences and then let you know they’re buying that gift. You can provide a link to said gift, but they still have to go to the site given to buy it for you. There’s just not a lot that’s spiffy about this tool. What isn’t spiffy is that it doesn’t provide the gift giver with a shipping address like the more useful wish list tools out there.

Hope these mini reviews have been helpful, as I’ll likely be getting endless gobs of spam forevermore because I signed up for each of these services. My information will be kept private, you say? I’ve heard that one before…

If they registered only at Macy’s and Bloomingdale’s, well, sometimes I feel a bit touchy about that. Unless you (or their friends generally) are of more liberal means, this always strikes me as rather graceless (but what do I know?). If you can’t afford anything on the registry that is not a single fork or the like, buy them something they would have registered for if only they’d thought of it (a pretty vase, a picture frame in the style of those they did register for, a kitchen gadget which you have discovered and swear by).

Either their other acquaintance are all affluent and will buy the registry out, or nobody can afford it and they will be justly repaid for being inconsiderate to their guests. You are not required to sacrifice your groceries for the month for someone else’s occasion and it is NOT good breeding to imply the contrary. If you are invited to a wedding that will OBVIOUSLY be so expensive as to demand a present you could not afford, I personally think it would be better to find a polite reason to decline.

As tempting as it is to scale up without limits when creating your registry, do give a thought to both those people who may not be particularly well off and those people who are attending your wedding as guests of your guests or even guests invited by your parents.

Your tastes may be grand, and you may see the occasion of your marriage as the perfect opportunity to introduce a little more silver, crystal, and china into your kitchen. Nonetheless, courtesy demands that you append all that high-class swag with a few inexpensive wine stems or a pretty porcelain sugar bowl.

What it comes down to is that you’re vastly more likely to get gifts you want and like when you stock your registry with things from the high end of the spectrum, the low end of the spectrum, and everything in between. Some people–perhaps those who’ve hit a rough patch or those you don’t know terribly well–will spring for the sugar bowl. Others (usually moms and dads and grandparents) will present you with the professional grade deli meat slicer you’ve been salivating over.

Finally, for the love of all things matrimonial, please do not whine and carry on when certain guests give you gifts not on your registry. My stance may be a somewhat unpopular one, but the fact of the matter is that guests are under no obligation whatsoever to look at your wedding registry much less buy something off of it. People managed just fine before the Marshall Fields department store invented registries in 1924, and one would hope that those who know you well presumably have some notion of your taste in housewares.

I want to have a “Boudoir Bridal Shower,” where my close friends and family shower me with lovely lingerie. I’d like to register for the items that I know will fit and flatter–what’s with all the alliteration–but none of the online department store registries will let me! Once I sign into my registry, all it lets me search for and add are the home items like towels, forks, oven mitts and the like. What is a girl to do? Do you know of any stores that let one register for lingerie? Will it make a difference if I go to the store in person?

At my bridal shower, one of my friends told me that when she was in her 20s, almost every bride would be given a hideously ugly peignoir set by her mother or grandmother. The assumption was that these brides would wear them on their wedding nights, but my friend maintains that most of them ended up stowed away in attics and in basements in their original, unopened packaging. People are so into vintage nowadays…makes me wonder how much you could get for one of those sets on eBay.

Anyhow, I don’t think I’d have the constitution necessary to survive a lingerie shower without dying from embarrassment. I can just imagine the sorts of silly things my friends and relations would pick out for me…especially the more, er, open minded ones. Could I wear something sexy my grannie bought with any degree of seriousness? Would the influx of undies weird The Beard out? I think it would weird me out.

But lingerie showers are growing in popularity as people awaken to the notion that pretty underthings don’t necessarily have to be uncomfortable. To register for lingerie, go to an actual lingerie shop instead of trying to get around outdated department store regulations. Secrets in Lace has a gift registry, though their selection is relatively limited. Victoria’s Secret lets you make a wish list you can share. Then, of course, there is Frederick’s, if you’re looking for something saucier.

All you really need to do is search for “lingerie registry” using Google, as that will help you find scads of online shops that will hook you up. Or you could use an online registry like Felicite, which lets you register for almost anything.

EDIT: Some folks have commented that A. shouldn’t be dictating her own shower’s theme, and these folks are absolutely correct. The individual or individuals hosting the shower should always be in charge of the details…not the bride-to-be herself. However, I opted not to bring that up in my original answer because I simply don’t know if A. is trying to inappropriately take the reigns. Perhaps A.’s MOH asked her directly what sort of shower she’d like to have, which happens more often than you’d think.