We need to be able to note exactly who/which person is the record is registered for an event. Sometimes it could be the spouse who is secondary on the record. After you select the event for registration in the events tab, the window opens with the primary person in an upper left window. At that point, that window should have a pull-down function to select if it’s Jane Doe, John Doe, or Jane and John Doe. This is also needed in organization records; we need to be able to select exactly who in the organization is registered. In my opinion, not being able to specify exactly who is attending is a major shortcoming in the event module. It seems to me that being able to accurately enter who’s attending the event is primary, vital information. The free-floating participant would not work, because we’d want that information in the “real” record. Otherwise when meeting with donors and referring to their profile, we could ask them why they didn’t attend the (insert name here) event.
Everywhere that I've worked with RE, attending an event was reason enough to give life partners/spouses their own full constituent record because it's not always the head of household that's attending.
We have this problem on a regular basis as well. Having a joint household record is a a common Raiser's Edge practice, but it greatly reduces the quality of event attendee data because you do not have an appropriate record of who attended the event.