Westerly Platinum

One of the great things about getting married is all the gifts people shower you with as their sign of love and excitement about your marriage.  It is probably one of the few times in your life you will get to replace all your old cheap stuff with nice matching things!  Russ and I both had just graduated from college when we got married, so we had cheap stuff or nothing at all.  In today's marriages, not very many people register for formal china.  There is nothing wrong if you do or don't do it, it is simply up to the couple.

I grew up where we ate on the nice china for all the major holidays (Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter).  We would have over 25 people at Christmas and still had to eat on the china, paper plates were not allowed.  My Granny had three different sets, my mom had two sets, my Grandmother had a set, and everyone I knew in the family had their own set.  When Granny passed away, my Mom got a lot of my Granny's china and crystal.  I think that's where I got my love for china and crystal from.  Now, I am not as big of a fan of silver like Mom and Granny since you have to polish it all the time.  My favorite is crystal, it can be used for all kinds of things.

When it came time to register, I had to make an important decision, what kind of formal china was I going to register for.  I knew this would take me a while, as I wanted something that said my style and hopefully would not go out of style in 30 years.  After looking at over 50 different of patterns, I had it narrowed down to three.  All were with with some type of silver on them.  I brought Russ along to help me make the final decision, he knocked out one right away saying it was too girly so we were down to two.  He could not make a decision, we thought about price and we finally decided on one and called in the expert to approve our final decision...Jacki aka Mom!  She agreed with our decision, so we knew we were good to go.  Lenox Westerly Platinum it is!  Then it was on to the stemware (Lenox Firelight), this was not a hard choice at all and it matched our china!  Plus it coordinates with Mom's in case I inherit hers :) 

A lot of people, could not believe we were registering for formal china, but it was something I wanted.  I wanted a set that I could use for the big meals with the family later down the line.  We may only use it a couple of times a year but it will hopefully create memories for our kids as well.  Also, it will provide as nice dishes for dinner parties when all the attornies in town (haha).

Well, it has been two and a half years and the china has patiently sat in storage containers in the laundry room and it got its first debut on Easter!  Since Mom and Dad come to church with us on Easter, I thought I would host Easter lunch this year.  That meant, I provided the meal and all the tableware!  I was so excited, I pulled out all the dishes, matching serving pieces, cleaned the sterling silverware that was Russ' Grandmothers and cleaned it, and completed the table with the new white placemats.  We took the table from casual to formal just like that (excuse the paper napkins, we realized we didn't have cloth ones just before lunch)!  Not only did we have a great meal and company but it was nice using all the wonderful wedding gifts and saying do you remember who gave us this.