They are both my age.  They are getting married in a few months.  I have looked at their online Bridal Registry at Crate and Barrel.  Looking through the list of wine glasses and entertaining accessories, I am filled with envy.  Bridal gift registry envy.  Images of a beautifully furnished house with all the trimmings.  Coordinated bath accessories alone fill me with lust.  Towels matching bath mats matching shower curtains matching guest hand towels.  Guest hand towels.  They, or probably more accurately, she chooses their colors.  Her bathroom is wedgewood blue, the bedroom is claret, the kitchen is eggshell.  The whole process seems so romantic and fresh - and somehow necessary.

At home, with my mismatched hand-me-down plates, my extremely eclectic coffee mugs, and my profoundly unorganized kitchen, I fantasize about a new house, freshly furnished and accessorized.  My domestic dreams, pushed so deeply down, being an independent feminist, surface as I click around the Crate and Barrel site. 

As a little girl, all of my mother's friends had daughters older than me.  I was the default flower girl.  Touring their brand new houses, I dreamed of the time that I, too, would have a nice husband, living in a neat, clean house and pillows whose only purpose were to be covered with shams and placed beautifully on a bed made with military precision, looking as if it was never slept on.  Their Ethan Allen couches were clean, their coffee tables held nothing but a simple vase and a copy of Architectural Digest or The New Yorker.  Their kitchens had Calphalon pots and pans hanging above the island, conjuring images of serving a full dinner with wine and dessert by candlelight every evening on their polished cherry dining room table with ivory damask cushions, before retiring to the formal living room to read Harper's and discuss the day's events, free from disagreement and discomfort.  Before bed, the kitchen would be immaculately clean, and lit only by the small light above the stove, dimly illuminating it's smooth, shiny aluminum surface.  Matching dinner plates put in their places, pots and pans hung up again, and coffee ready to go in the morning, courtesy of the black Braun coffeemaker neatly placed on the spotless counter, calm and deep sleep on the smoothest, cleanest sheets is assured.

Though i've lived with a man for the better part of a decade, i'm single.  I've never had a bridal shower.  Therefore, my furniture doesn't match.  My sheets don't match my comforter.  My comforter doesn't coordinate with my bedroom curtains.  Who am I kidding - what bedroom curtains?  My mattress and box spring sit directly of the floor.  My towels don't match anything, including each other.  I have a mustard yellow stove, bought used along with my mustard refrigerator, for $200.  I have no countertops.  My pots and pans are thrown together with cookbooks, cans of condensed soup and jars of peanut butter on some bookshelves brought in from the living room.  My floor, no matter how much I scrub, will never gleam.  Daily, I am forced to endure the indignity of drying myself with a towel that in no way coordinates with the towel with which I wrap my hair or the bathrobe I wear while applying my makeup in the living room.

The solution?  Get married.  Once you walk down the aisle in the white dress, you are transformed into a domestic wonder.  With all of those gifts carefully chosen on a Saturday afternoon with your mother and future mother-in-law, you become a cookie baking, casserole making, master decorator.  You will have a sewing room that will become the baby's room exactly two years after the wedding.

Perhaps it's the idea of choosing your own gifts.  It's shopping without spending any money.  I'm so jealous of my friends.  In just months, their lives will be perfect.  With their stainless steel bar accessories and shiny new wine glasses, parties will be hosted with ease.  There will be witty banter, and no one will vomit.  Not at these parties.  No longer will their dishes go unwashed in the sink.  No more will they be forced to rest their heads on pillowcases that don't match their sheets.

Are we born with an internal need for bridal registry?  Do we get married just for the gifts?  I could go on and on about the perpetuation of this myth in order to force women into marriage, and with that a life of unpaid servitude, but that's too easy.  You, know, easy like my life would be if I had a matching duvet and bed ruffle.

-Ann S. Moxie