Excerpted from Chapter 4: Do We Really Need Another Tiny Crystal Bowl? Creating Your Gift Registry

Brides-to-be: it’s important to remember that men, in general, don’t like acquiring random stuff. Food and DVDs never qualify as random stuff, but most registry items do. This means that at some point in the registry process your fiancé will freak out about how much random stuff you have on the list. The best way to deal with this mini-meltdown is to give your groom a few “captain’s picks.” Let him have a couple of $6 beer steins, and suddenly there will be no complaints when you add on the ninth pair of pillow shams. And, months later, you can simply return the beer steins when he’s at the gym.

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