Building Your Wedding Dinnerware Registry: A Guide to Creating Your Myrth Collection
The best wedding registries aren't built from templates. They're built from the life you're actually planning to live together.
We've spent the last ten years helping couples create dinnerware collections that feel personal, not prescribed. Not matching sets pulled from a catalog, but thoughtfully assembled pieces that mix colors, shapes, and uses in ways that make sense for your table, your cooking style, your home.
Here's what we've learned about building a registry that will actually serve you—not just look good on a spreadsheet.
Start With How You Actually Eat
Before you choose a single plate, ask yourselves a few questions:
Do you cook at home most nights, or are you weekend warriors in the kitchen? If you're daily home cooks, you'll want depth in your everyday pieces—multiple dinner plates, plenty of bowls, mugs you reach for every morning. If you cook less frequently but love to entertain, focus on serving pieces and dinner party essentials.
What does breakfast look like for you? Coffee drinkers need Swig Cups (our 8oz cup perfect for cappuccinos). Tea people might want Sake Cups or Swig Cups. Cereal every morning? You need bowls that feel right for that. Avocado toast? Our 8" Appetizer Plates work better than full dinner plates.
How do you entertain? Family-style dinners need big serving bowls and platters. Plated courses need more individual dinner plates. Cocktail parties? Our 6" Morsel Plates work perfectly for appetizers and small bites.
There's no right answer here—just your answer. And that's what makes a registry actually useful instead of aspirational clutter.
The Three-Tier Build
We recommend thinking about your wedding dinnerware registry in three phases:
Tier 1: Your Everyday Place Settings (Start Here)
This is what you'll use Monday through Thursday when it's just the two of you, plus the ability to comfortably host a dinner party. Think: 8–10 place settings of the essentials.
We offer three set configurations:
3-Piece Set: Dinner Plate, Appetizer Plate, Tasting Bowl
4-Piece Set: Adds either a Basso Bowl or Helping Bowl to the 3-Piece
5-Piece Set: Adds either a Basso Bowl or Helping Bowl plus the Morsel Plate
Most couples start with the 4-Piece Set with Basso Bowl because the Basso is our most popular item—incredibly versatile for pasta, risotto, grain bowls, and more. Consider adding Swig Cups (perfect for cappuccinos or tea) or Sake Cups to round out your collection.
In Myrth terms: This might be 8–10 place settings of a 4-Piece Set: Nightfall Dinner Plates, Canyon Appetizer Plates, Verdigris Basso Bowls, and Moonlight Tasting Bowls, plus Dove Swig Cups for your morning coffee or tea. Notice we're already mixing colors—more on that below.
Choosing your set: Think about what meals you most commonly eat. If pasta, risotto, and grain bowls are mainstays, you definitely want the Basso Bowl (our most popular item—go with the 4-Piece Set with Basso). If ramen, noodles, and deeper portions are more your style, the 4-Piece with Helping Bowl is your pick. If you love little snacky bites, desserts, or need a bread plate, the 5-Piece Set with the Morsel Plate makes sense.
Tier 2: The Entertaining Expansion
Once you have your everyday foundation covered, add pieces for larger gatherings and special occasions.
Add serving bowls and platters, plus specialty pieces for hosting crowds.
In Myrth terms: Add our large Feast Bowl in Canyon (perfect for family-style salads and shared dishes), a 16" Oval Platter in Nightfall for show-stopping mains, a 12" Oval Platter in Rosewood for sides and cheese boards, and perhaps a few extra Tasting Bowls in Dove for dips and small portions.
Tier 3: The Nice-to-Haves
These are pieces that make daily life a little more beautiful but aren't strictly necessary. Add them if your registry needs more items or if they genuinely fit your life.
Consider vases (our Moon Vase and Pilar Vase make beautiful gifts), additional bowl styles for specific uses, extra Swig Cups in different colors, and specialty serving pieces.
Let's Talk About Bowls (Because This Confuses Everyone)
We make three different bowls, and people always ask which one to choose. Here's the honest breakdown:
Basso Bowl (9" diameter, 2" deep, 24oz): Our most popular item. Low and wide—a true bowl-plate hybrid—designed specifically for pasta, risotto, and anything saucy or brothy. The ample flat surface gives you room to plate and cut food, while the shallow curved rim contains liquids. Also a good choice if you're low on storage space—stacks lower than the Helping Bowl. This is the bowl that gets the most use in restaurant kitchens and home tables alike.
Helping Bowl (8" diameter, 2.75" deep, 32oz): Your go-to for a helping of a meal—ramen, grain salads, cereal, noodles. The flat bottom makes it easy to cut solid foods, and the gentle curved sides are perfect for scooping. Works equally well as a serving vessel for small shared dishes like a side vegetable.
Tasting Bowl (6" diameter, 2" deep, 12oz): Designed for tastings or smaller portions—morning cereal, a cozy soup, a few scoops of ice cream. Also great paired with our 12" Oval Platter for two-part dishes like crudités and dip, or for side dishes at the table.
Our recommendation: The Basso Bowl is our most popular for a reason—it's incredibly versatile. Many couples build their collection around Basso Bowls and add the other styles based on their specific cooking habits. If you eat a lot of pasta or grain bowls, Basso is essential. Add Helping Bowls if you want deeper capacity for soups, ramen, and stews. Add Tasting Bowls for sides, desserts, and smaller portions.
Mixing Colors: The Permission You Didn't Know You Needed
Here's something we tell every couple: You don't need matching dinnerware.
Restaurants figured this out decades ago. A Moonlight plate, a Verdigris bowl, a Nightfall cup on the same table? That's not chaotic—it's intentional, layered, interesting. It looks curated, not catalog.
Our glaze palette is designed to mix. We have six colors—three warm (Rosewood, Canyon, Dove) and three cool (Moonlight, Verdigris, Nightfall). Our glazes feature beautiful texture with color variation and gloss finishes that enhance the tactile experience. They don't compete; they complement.
Some combinations that work beautifully:
Nightfall dinner plates + Verdigris bowls + Moonlight accents Moonlight dinner plates + Canyon bowls + Dove cups Canyon dinner plates + Nightfall bowls + Verdigris accents All one color if you prefer uniformity (Moonlight and Dove are our most popular neutrals)
Bold combinations: Rosewood, Verdigris, Canyon Muted combinations: Moonlight, Dove, Nightfall Warm combinations: Canyon, Rosewood, Dove Cool combinations: Nightfall, Verdigris, Moonlight
The benefit of mixing: When a piece inevitably breaks years from now, you're not scrambling to find the exact discontinued pattern. You just add another color into the rotation. Your collection evolves instead of becoming obsolete.
How Myrth Registry Works
We offer a personalized registry service because building a dinnerware collection shouldn't feel like filling out a spreadsheet.
Here's the process:
Fill out an inquiry form at myrth.us/registry to let us know you're interested
We'll reach out to talk through how you live. What you cook, how you entertain, what your kitchen looks like, what colors feel right.
We'll create a personalized registry page for you at myrthregistry.com with the collection we build together
Your guests shop directly from your custom registry page at myrthregistry.com
We ship everything carefully. Each piece is individually wrapped and packed to survive the journey to your home.
It's personal, flexible, and designed around your actual life—not a one-size-fits-all template.
Why Handcrafted Porcelain Matters for a Registry
You're building the first collection for your first home together. That's significant. It deserves more thought than clicking "add to cart" on a big-box registry algorithm.
Handcrafted porcelain dinnerware from a small Rhode Island studio means:
Heirloom quality. These pieces are engineered to last decades. We've had customers use the same Myrth bowls for 10+ years with daily dishwasher cycles and no chips. Your kids could inherit these.
Restaurant-grade durability. Our proprietary clay and glaze recipes are designed for the demands of commercial kitchens—which means they'll handle your busy life together. Dishwasher safe, microwave safe, and formulated without lead or cadmium.
Supporting small American manufacturing. Your registry supports two product designers and our small team in East Providence, Rhode Island. We're not a faceless factory; we're Eric and Abby, and we make everything here.
Customization and service. You're not picking from a dropdown menu. You're working with us to build something that makes sense for you.
Our Honest Registry Advice
After a decade of this, here's what we wish more couples knew:
Start with 8–10 place settings, or consider 12 if you have the space. In our experience, 12 place settings is the most common number folks buy. Think about your storage space, your dishwasher capacity (sounds funny, but if you have a larger dishwasher you may need more plates to fill it), how often you eat at home, and how many guests you typically host for dinner parties and holidays.
Prioritize what you'll use daily. Those everyday place settings—dinner plates, bowls, cups—matter more than serving platters you'll only use twice a year. Get the foundation right first.
It's okay to build slowly. Your registry doesn't need to be complete on day one. Registries can stay open after the wedding. Add pieces as you figure out what you actually need.
Mix your registry. Dinnerware, yes. But also linens, kitchen tools, experiences. A great registry reflects your whole life, not just one category.
You can always add more later. We keep our glaze colors consistent for roughly two years specifically so you can add to your collection down the road and everything still works together. This isn't fast fashion; it's built to grow with you.
Ready to Start?
If you're newly engaged and thinking about your wedding registry, we'd love to help you build your collection.
Visit myrth.us/registry to fill out an inquiry form and get started.
Let's build something you'll actually use—and love—for decades.
Congratulations on your engagement. Here's to the table you're building together.
Myrth handcrafts elegant, durable porcelain tableware in East Providence, Rhode Island. Founded by product designers Abigail and Eric Smallwood, we've been helping couples build their collections since 2015.