Bridal Registries Convert to Help Fire Victims

After the fires, residents burned out of their homes turned to friends, relatives, colleagues and insurance agents. Some, however, sought help from a more unusual source: the bridal consultant.

After all, who knows better how to reconstruct the immolated goods and gadgets of a house than the person who makes a living taking brides (and lots of grooms) through the housewares department so they can partake of the time-honored ritual of registering for gifts?

So the Fire Registry was born, a take on the traditional bridal registry (now computerized), where couples list household goods they would like to receive as wedding presents. But this time, the task of registering is hardly joyous and far more formidable. One couple at the Broadway in Santa Monica paused over the part of the form that called for an address and phone number. “I don’t know what to give you,” the husband told the bridal consultant.

“We were literally exhausted,” said Crystal Davis, describing how she and her husband, Dick, felt after they had been escorted by a bridal consultant and a personal shopper through aisles of china, flatware, glassware, pots and pans at Bullock’s--the same place they registered 16 years ago as an engaged couple. Now, they were back, coaxed by friends and members of their church who wanted to give them--for lack of a better word--a shower. Aided by a bridal consultant armed with the out-sized registry form--at the top “bridal” is crossed out and replaced with “fire assistance”--they chose white everyday dishes, deferred decisions on the mundane (“I don’t care what kind of cookie sheets I get,” chuckled Crystal Davis, 38) and gave up at bedding.

“That’s the farthest thing from their minds; they don’t have bedrooms,” said Charlotte Williams, the bridal consultant who helped them through the Pasadena store.

“I found it to be extremely difficult and emotional,” said Dick Davis, 40, a real estate agent. “Everything you chose began to increase the scope of what you lost. We spent 3 1/2 hours there and all we were in was china and the kitchen, and that’s not a fraction of what it will take to put together a home.”

The most pedestrian things bring back memories of the losses. “Crystal was fine until we hit one area,” Williams said. “They had a lot of cookbooks that had been his mother’s, so when we came to those, it got a little difficult. And we moved on.”

The couple, along with their three children and golden retriever, have found refuge at the home of one of Dick Davis’ childhood friends in Pasadena. On the table in the living room are color snapshots--the remains of their home in Kinneloa Estates. The house was leased, but the lost belongings, some still in boxes, were theirs.

The registry is only one perk that some area department stores have been offering to fire victims. Others include 10% to 20% discounts, easier payment terms and increased credit lines. Fire victims also get top priority among people waiting for a turn through the store with bridal consultants. “Fire victims walk in and go to the head of the list,” said Tella Archambault, the personal shopper who also accompanied the Davises at Bullock’s.

So far, victims have only trickled in to undertake the time-consuming registry process. “Even for the brides, going through the registry is overwhelming,” said Williams, noting that these days most of the brides she sees are already starting out with far more household items than fire victims possess. “It requires a lot of thought. These people are not ready.”

There’s some sticker shock too. “We have can openers that are $25,” said Debbie Mills, a Broadway bridal consultant who took a displaced Malibu couple through the store--and found many more reasonably priced items.

But as painful as it is, it’s also useful, an effort of “discipline”--as consultants put it--to chart everything you need, whether you receive it as a gift or buy it yourself. “It’s terribly practical--down to ‘Do you need a peeler?’ ” Williams said.

Unlike bridal couples indulging their every household fancy, fire victims stick to the basics. The Davises skipped fine china. “It seemed like that was a luxury relative to our situation and knowing that our friends would be making personal sacrifices of their own stuff to get us stuff, we didn’t feel like that was appropriate,” Dick Davis said.

But mostly the trek through the lower level of Bullock’s in Pasadena was a halfhearted expedition.

By the time they got to bedding and bath towels, “it was like brain fade,” Dick Davis said.

“At this point,” said his wife, “how can you be picky when you have nothing?”