5 hours ago
4
Name: Wedding lists
Age: Invented in Chicago 101 years ago.
Appearance: Increasingly bleak.
You’re right, I also resent being told what to buy people for their wedding. Exactly – especially when what they’re asking for is toilet paper.
Pardon? No, honestly, this is a thing now. Tesco does it.
But wedding lists should be to help couples build their first homes together. Oh please, that doesn’t happen any more. Say your best friend announced that they were getting married to someone who they didn’t already live with. How would you react?
I’d try to talk them out of it. Exactly. Everyone who gets married these days already shares a home, so the last thing they need is a duvet set or crockery.
But they’ll always need toilet paper. Well, and other stuff. The thinking behind the Tesco wedding list is that it’s much more practical to help a newly married couple out with their weekly shop. The supermarket’s research found that two in five newlywed or engaged couples preferred practical gifts, rather than extravagant gifts. And to be fair, there are layers to the service.
Layers? Sure. If you’re feeling flush, you could buy the couple Tesco’s “A toast to love” package, which is basically just a load of champagne. The cheapest option costs £39, and contains six packets of biscuits and some tea.
And then the toilet paper one? That costs £63, and contains five packets of toilet paper, eight kitchen rolls, two tubes of toothpaste, bin bags, shampoo, conditioner, hand wash and shower gel.
I can’t work out how depressed I should be about this. Oh, all the way depressed. As much as Tesco is making out that it’s helpful to be practical, it’s also a result of the wedding industry growing so wildly out of hand that a wedding is all but impossible to afford. In 2022, one survey found that the average newlyweds find themselves with a wedding debt of almost £4,000.
Just for one day. Yes, it’s ridiculous. On the other hand, think of all the biscuits.
Is this going to be cyclical? What, you’re asking if the practical wedding list is a weird time-sensitive blip, like when wartime couples used to hide their austere little wedding cakes inside great big ornamental cardboard cakes?
Yes. God, no. The way things are going, 50 years from now people will be burning with jealousy that newlyweds even got bin bags from their guests.
Well, this is cheery. Oh, chin up. A wedding can still be the happiest day of someone’s life. Especially if that person really has a thing for toothpaste.
Do say: “Darling, let’s get married.”
Don’t say:“Because we’re running low on bog roll.”
