Ivanka and Jared’s Wedding Registry: What Would Register as Real Class
By Debra Nussbaum Cohen October 4, 2009
Is it just me, or are wedding registries tacky? I find it strange to be telling people what you want for gifts – especially when both the blushing bride and handsome groom are scions of two of America’s highest-profile, wealthy real estate families.
A story in today’s New York Times, here, details what Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner are requesting on their wedding registries at Tiffany & Co., Crate & Barrel and Williams- Sonoma.
In July Ivanka converted to Judaism, and the couple is to be married October 25th at Donald Trump’s golf resort in Bedminster, N.J.
Fortunately for the soon-to-be-married couple, most of the items on their registry at Tiffany’s have already been snapped up. There’s still time to get them that Elsa Peretti sterling silver serving fork for just $325, though.
Am I being especially snarky about this? Perhaps.
I’ve never felt comfortable with the idea of wedding registries, even when it was time for my own wedding, 19 years ago this month. My mother had to press me to register at Bloomies and the late, lamented Fortunoff’s, for the benefit of out-of-town relatives who didn’t know us well enough to know what to give.
Sure, I got many pieces of the flatware set I liked at the time, but something about it also felt wrong. And goodness knows that M and I actually needed assistance to feather our nest. Nonetheless, it felt kind of tacky.
I find it even more tacky for the super-wealthy to be asking for gifts, whether it’s a $10 Williams-Sonoma spatula or something more glam.
Surely Ivanka and Jared, who are both leaders in the business world in their own rights — Ivanka in her father’s real estate concern and in her own jewelry company, and Jared not just in his family’s real estate business but also as publisher of The New York Observer — already have well-stocked kitchens of their own and can afford to buy anything else they may need.
To many today this couple apparently epitomizes what class looks like, but to me the far classier thing to do would have been to state, on their wedding invitations, “no gifts, please,” and then include a little card which could suggest two or three charities that the couple (hopefully) supports.
I’d have loved to see one of those not-for-profits aid American veterans, and another be a Jewish organization which supports the hungry, like the Metropolitan Council on Jewish Poverty, based right here in the couple’s home city.
I can’t even begin to imagine what the families are spending on the wedding, which will reportedly have about 500 guests.
But if the couple were to comport themselves in a relatively modest way — particularly at this time when so many face economic duress — and ask for help for the less fortunate? Now that would have been real class.
Ivanka and Jared, I offer you this unsolicited wedding wish: Mazal tov. May you be blessed with many years together of love, joy and the true wealth — children, and the ability to use the resources with which you have been blessed to do good in the world.
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