Bed, Bath & Betrayal

Wedding registries let the world know what we want. But who exactly are they telling?

- MATTIE KAHN

Your Cuisinart doesn’t impress Jung Lee. The impresario behind Fête, a full service event planning and design production firm in New York, has been executing customized bashes for such clients as Joseph Altuzarra and Jann Wenner since 2002. You can’t miss a Fête production: Invitations are hand-addressed, and no two seating charts are alike. Lee takes immense pride in her work, which is what made the sometimes lackluster registries of Lee’s clients that much more grating.

The care she pours into commissioning one-of-a-kind seashell-and-drift woodencrusted chuppahs just to find an Oxo peeler on someone’s Zola? It kills her. Her clients have rented out museums and had rose gardens planted to line their aisles, but even the most well-heeled among them seem unable to resist the pleasures of a big box store scanner gun. “I’ve seen people put shower curtains on their registries!” Lee says. “Or a vacuum cleaner! I’m like, ‘For real?’ ”

Lee at least can claim a professional interest in appraising registries. The rest of us have no such cover. I have browsed the registries of Bravo TV stars and TikTok influencers. I have Googled the registries of people I haven’t seen since high school. If I’ve read your New York Times wedding announcement, chances are I’ve done some sleuthing and found your registry—to look at salt and pepper mills, to find out whether I think a bride who got married at the Plaza has taste or just a good planner, to assess whether I too need Schott Zwiesel glassware (I do).