Do you have any idea how hard it is to make a wedding registry when you’ve been living together for six years? In many ways, registries only make sense for very young couples or those who go straight from living with their parents to living with a spouse.

Dre and I did our registry at Amazon, in part because the company has paid our bills since 2000, and in part because they have a really wide diversity of products to choose from. Oh, and also because I’m a web geek and for godsake, where else would I register?

But it was like pulling teeth out to put things on the registry. It took us ages to find the $7 vegan cookbooks and who knows about the knife set. We’ve got martini glasses from Finland and a subscription for “fruits of the month” gift baskets (er, the gift that keeps on giving?). We’ve got the Wandering Chicken of Pistoulet and a cheese grater and a robotic vacuum cleaner. Each of these things felt silly to add to the registry, because none of them are anything we need. We have everything we need. It’s hard to pick out gifts that we, as a couple, want. I have lots of things that I want for ME, but is it really right to have a My Little Pony on the wedding registry?

Stranger still is that a couple guests have called to say, “I don’t want to get you something boring off your registry — what do you really want.” What I really want is a handcrafted running table custom-made by my mother in law, but I already got that. What I really want is a night of sleep where I don’t wake up before dawn and start mentally running through my to-do list. What I really want is all our friends and family in one place at the same time, but that’s already in the mail. What else could we really want?