Been hanging out with my parents for the last couple days catching up on all the family gossip and making plans for the future. Last night my mom and I were out on a walk and had a bit of conflict about mine and Jenni’s wedding. (Not sure exactly when said wedding is taking place yet, but we’re starting to discuss details.)
Both Jenni and I are wanting to take the good wedding bits and keep them, but not be bound by tradition to do anything that we don’t particularly like. It’s a tricky row to hoe since weddings have quite a few interested parties and many of them have a pretty clear picture of how things should go down.
Last night I was discussing with my mom the procedure for getting gifts. The way a wedding is supposed to work is Jenni and I pick out a whole bunch of stuff that we want to have then people show that they care by buying stuff for us.
The one problem is that Jenni and I are currently living apart and running two entirely separate households. We have enough stuff already for the two of us apart, we are almost certainly going to have lots of extra stuff when we merge houses. I have an emotional aversion to the thought of getting even more stuff and I have been trying to figure out why.
Part of it is what Paul Graham says in his essay Stuff:
Stuff used to be rare and valuable… Stuff has gotten a lot cheaper, but our attitudes toward it haven’t changed correspondingly… Most of the stuff I accumulated was worthless, because I didn’t need it.
