A couple weeks ago we started registering for wedding gifts, and if you’ve never had the thrill of holding a scan gun.. let me tell ya, it’s a little powerful. We’ll go into more detail on where we registered/what we chose next week, but for now I wanted to share with you my favorite items on our registry: our china!

Wedding China can be a very controversial subject [in the wedding world, not the real world]. Some more traditional people think it’s simply a must to own a set for fancy holiday dinners, and to pass down from generation to generation as family heirlooms. Others think it’s a waste of money and space because a lot of people only use it for Thanksgiving and Christmas, so they choose to forgo having it on their registry. Derek and I think that if you own it, you should use it otherwise what’s the point? So we not only plan on having wedding china, but also using it. A LOT. Why not break out the china for some fancy Friday night pizza, just for fun? Or let the kids eat off of it every now and then? I rather risk breaking a piece than let it collect dust in a cabinet and never get used. We want to enjoy it!

That being said, it was a little overwhelming trying to choose the right china pattern because we wanted it to be timeless, and unique to our family. Here are some we toyed with.

Although I loved the fun bright colors with gold trim, I was nervous that 20 years down the line they’d look super ’10s [is that a decade yet?] So I decided to stick with more timeless patterns and colors to keep it simple. I knew I didn’t want to have a whole matchy matchy set because the main pattern that I wanted was a little busy. So we went to Macys to look at them all in person and play around with different arrangements. I knew I loved the Kate Spade Larabee Road and Vera Wang Flirt patterns, so I started mixing and re-mixing and we settled on this:

1 – Vera Wang Flirt bread plate | 2 – Vera Wang Flirt salad plate (and soup bowl not shown) | 3 – Kate Spade Larabee Road dinner plate

I haven’t settled on the coffee cups and saucers yet. I wanted the Larabee ones, but Derek had to draw the line somewhere because it was getting a little too feminine. So I thought about these Japer Conran lovelies, but they’re were a little too busy with the pattern combination we had settled on.  And I didn’t like most of the coffee cups that came with china patterns because they’re too “square”, I prefer a more sloped cup. So any suggestions would be lovely! We also picked out a few of the serverware pieces that we pulled from the Jasper Conran line along with some Jonathan Adler items.

1 – Jonathan Adler Muse sugar bowl | 2 – Jonathan Adler Muse creamer | 3 – Jasper Conran Baroque 12″ serving bowl | 4 – Jasper Conran Baroque serving platter | 5 – Jasper Conran Baroque 5.5″ bowls

Because we have six people in our immediate family [we're both only children, did you know that?] and also six people in our core friend group, we decided to get eight place settings so that we would have enough for children and grandparents one day. It sounds/feels weird, but you have to think long term when it comes to these sort of investments. Now all I need is a pretty thrifted china cabinet to flip. What is your dream china pattern? Or do you think having china is silly?