“…And it Wouldn’t be a Party Without the Drunken Father of My Dearest Friend…”
Wow. Apparently nothing gets people talking like the subject of weddings. I have never before had so many comments, ever. Have they tried this strategy in the Middle East? The next time a passel of frowning and taciturn leaders of the Arab world are assembled, I think Kofi Annan should smile brightly around the table, clasp his hands together and say “So! My daughter is getting married, and she needs some advice…”
The unexpected side effect of your enthusiasm was the rekindling of my own wedding-related excitement. Which makes it sound as if I wasn’t excited about it before, but that’s not precisely it, either.
Originally I was giddy, and full of planning vim and vigor. The Actually and I designed invitations and called caterers and picked a honeymoon spot. And then, about ten days ago, we booked a venue and got the contract in the mail. And I had a crisis.
The crisis began as purely monetary, spurred by the realization that these people wanted me to send them $1200, in cash money, as a deposit. I shuffled around for a few days getting hivey whenever I thought of the contract and avoiding calls from the caterer, and sweeping all my planning cards into a stack and putting them in a desk drawer.
Next, one of the TWO close friends I am inviting informed me that she may not be able to make it after all, and I began to consider eloping. Wedding, Schmedding. Sure, I’d like to have a party with bunches of family and pretty pictures and lobster-stuffed-tenderloin-stuffed-cheesecake, but, well, I’d also like a chauffeur and working ovaries, and neither of those things are going to be dropped in my lap any time soon. Besides, the $5000 wedding budget my mother has so kindly gifted us would make a solid start towards a down payment on a house, and blahblahblah-di-blahblah.
Because I am an obsessive a self-reflective sort, I soon realized that this crisis was about more than money. It was about my craven, irrational fear, and my belief that if I cleverly refrain from having any expectations, they cannot fail to be fulfilled. Part of me feels about this wedding the way I imagine I would feel about a pregnancy—perhaps if I can avoid believing in it, I can also avoid feeling foolish and devastated when it inevitably blows up in my face.
I am afraid of hearing a doctor say “I’m sorry, there’s no heartbeat,” or hearing the Actually say “I changed my mind. I don’t want to marry you after all.” And I am afraid of all the moments after that—calling friends and family, saying Hey, you know that date I told you to remember? Forget it.
Yes, it was my old friend, The Crazy.
Luckily, a few minutes an hour of reassurance from the Actually calmed me down enough to stand in front of the mirror and firmly tell my reflection that I. AM. GETTING. MARRIED. And then I bought a wedding magazine.
And then I wrote my last entry, and was deluged with sweet, excited comments, and started getting giddy all over again, and did you know that you are supposed to save the top bit of the wedding cake to eat on your first anniversary? I didn’t, but what a delightful idea! And look at this lovely dress! (But not in that color!) And also, what flowers might go nicely with white peonies?
And I took my planning cards out of the drawer. And we all lived happily ever after.
Except.
Compiling a guest list is perhaps the trickiest piece of diplomacy I have ever attempted, and I live with a moody poet and three cats, so that’s saying something. I think the Actually and I initially had twenty-ish people we planned to invite. Innocently, we showed our guest lists to our mothers {Ed. Note: Why? Why did we do that?}, and then it began:
“Well, if you invite Delightful Aunt you have to invite Poisonous Aunt as well. And of course that means including the Shiftless Cousins. And the younger Shiftless Cousin is engaged to Town Bicycle, so you MUST invite her…and if you invite Town Bicycle, you’ll want to send an invitation to her mother, Remorseless Tramp. She’s one of my oldest friends, you know.”
Suddenly we are at fifty people, and it is only by skating on the edge of (apparent) rudeness that I am able to keep the number that low.
And is it just me, or does EVERY FAMILY have a Poisonous Aunt? Because the Actually and I each have one, and they are remarkably–sinisterly–similar. We are seating them at the same table, because it will be diverting to see them together.
Secretly, I am hoping that their meeting will cause some sort of matter v.s. anti-matter reaction and both aunts will disappear in a cloud of festively colored smoke, but I don’t know how likely that is to happen.
21 Comments
I totally get you on The Crazy. I didn’t make any concrete wedding planning moves until probably 14 months after I got engaged–well, partly because my parents were Causing Problems and Throwing Up Obstacles and generally acting difficult, but also because I was freaking the fuck out. Then I got over myself and planned the whole thing in 5 months.
Re: wedding cake top, be sure to wrap it very well. I have some friends who lost their cake top to freezer burn, but I wrapped mine in about 8 billion layers of plastic wrap and it survived the year nicely. Delicious.
I have no advice on the guest list. I’m sure we offended many people with our decision to keep the wedding small(ish). Though really, at the end of the day the only people who really cared were our parents, who were much more offended on behalf of various distant crazy relatives than the crazy relatives themselves.
I know we offended some people by not inviting them, because some of them were rude enough to tell our parents that “Well, we’d say ‘tell them congratulations from us’ but we weren’t invited to the wedding.” See, reinforcing our belief that we didn’t want them there. And yes, every family has a poisonous aunt.
Hope that The Crazy has left the building for good and you can enjoy some more planning!
Mmm, lobster-stuffed-tenderloin-stuffed-cheesecake.
Some perhaps-helpful hints, possibly assvice:
Peonies = = ants. I’m sure a good florist would know how to avoid this problem, but if you’re like so many of our friends who thought they’d save money and do it themselves with peonies from the farmer’s market or even their yard, be warned.
Don’t let the guest list ruin your day. If people are close to you, they should be there. If they’re your fiance’s childhood best friend’s mom’s ex-boyfriend, they don’t need to attend. And they’ll be OK with not attending, because really, who wants to attend the wedding of a near stranger? (And yes, my now-MIL tried to invite said fiance’s friend’s mom’s ex-boyfriend. That’s where we drew a line in the sand.) Just repeat “this is a small and intimate ceremony” until your moms’ ears bleed.
Finally, carrot cake does not freeze for a year. Through a very bizarre set of coincidences, we ended up saving a 2-serving carrot cake as our “anniversary cake” and it was like eating carrot-flavored chalk. No go. A lot of bakeries now will make you a new one on the house, which loses some of the tradition but will taste much better.
Also, I think you hit the nail on the head with the Poisonous Aunt. I’m trying to find a way to avoid having her at my shower, but she’s a tricky one, that PA. Good plan with the matter-antimatter annihilation.
How about you only invite the people whose faces you want to see on your wedding day? And tell everyone else to f-off?
Not everyone will come, even those you are pretty sure will. We had a ridiculous 260 invited guests, and “only” 160 came to the wedding.
Oh, the guestlist! ‘Tis fraught with unhappy relatives and inevitable hurt feelings.
I was in law school when we got married. We wound up inviting the entire class.
As Pooh would say, “oh, bother.”
The Crazy is why we got engaged in October and married in December. Had I had more than 6 weeks to think about what I was doing, I’m not sure I could have done it. Having no time at all to plan things made making decisions much easier, too.
Our guest list tripled (from 20 to 60) upon showing our parents, fifty people turned up and offense was still taken by many.
My own Poisonous Aunt was decidedly poisonous about the whole thing: although she was invited she complained bitterly, not only because her daughters not invited (we had a no cousins rule which worked spectaculary) but because the date didn’t suit her. She went so far as to write me a two page letter about how upset she was by our decision to marry so quickly and so close to Christmas (?) and in the end she didn’t attend. Which was perfect.
The guest list is pure insanity, I don’t care if you’re trying to keep it to 20, 50, 100, 200, whatever.
We picked a final number we wanted and then made our own list of friends/coworkers/exs/etc. Then we told our parents how many invites that left them, and that they could figure out how to fill those slots however they choose.
Kind of heartless, but it put the kebosh on most arguements.
I really enjoy your humor and writing style. I must say that.
And, we did not save the top of the cake for a year. We saved it for about a month. It took a lot of room in the freezer, plus it was sooooo good, that I didn’t want it to get freezer burn.
My invite strategy was similar to STA’s. We decided to invite 100 people, and divided it up evenly–my parents got 33, my in-laws got 33, and my DH and I got 34. There was some consternation, but everyone realized it was fair.
I also recommend my friend’s strategy. Instead of eloping, she and her fiance rented a house at the beach for a week. They invited immediate family and close friends (apx. 20 people) to join them. On Thursday they walked down to the beach, got married, and enjoyed a catered lunch that turned into a great all-night party. She was the least-stressed bride I’ve ever seen, and everyone had a great time.
Although I am, in a very girly-girly way, totally excited about one day becoming bridezilla myself, the guest list is frightening.
I get invitations from my second cousins. Second cousins! Gah!
I must gently disagree with EJW, since my aforementioned delicious wedding cake was a carrot cake, and it froze beautifully and tasted great a year later. Actually, when I make carrot cake myself, I usually slice up the leftovers and freeze them. The key is wrapping it like crazy–like, wrap in so many layers it seems like too many, then double that.
okay, enough about cake. Now I’m hungry!
Sta’s idea is great- allot your ‘rents a fair share of invitations to dole out on their own, so that anybody who gets left out can blame it on them!
This will sound horrible, but… guests should give a wedding gift AT LEAST equal to the cost of their own food at the wedding. If you invite people whom you’re sure will be paying for themselves, you can invite more people!
Oh, wouldn’t it be lovely if PA’s (or other poisonous folk, for that matter) would just go up in a puff of smoke!
Believe me when I say the guest list and seating chart will be the most stressful part and that’s a good thing because everything else will be gravy.
Good luck!
Aaahh yes wedding planning…. I am still for the eloping thing! LOL!
Take care and I hope it all goes well!
Ah the infamous guest list. My “measly” guest list of 65 quickly inflated to 200 once my mother and his got hold of it. A flurry of “You must…!” and “You can’t…!” followed. I have come to recognize this moment as the beginning of the end. Months of fighting ensued. The whole thing (including our engagement) nearly called off. Finally, I said to my fiancee, “Either we elope or we’re just going to live together and never get married.” So we eloped. Best. Decision. Ever. Good luck with your planning/future battles/meltdowns/sticker shock. :)
The stress, the stress. I like Sta’s idea too-
Also, LOVE Peonies. Love them. I had them in multiple colors with freesia and other delicate drapey flowers to offset their fuller blooms. I think there were some roses too.
About the Crazy - remember, its your wedding. Its your day. Not theirs.
Of course, for us? It will be the second time around for both? Current, non concrete plans include either a Caribbean island or Vegas. To be married by Elvis, of course.
My mother would flip, mind you. Rabid Elvis fan that she is.
Most of my extended family is so horrifying that we haven’t been in touch with them for years. The first and last time I saw many of them was at an uncle’s wake when I was in college, and that was enough for me. Fortunately mother feels the same, but recently she’s begun making noises about “having to” invite her freaky neighbors if VB and I ever get married. (??) I put the brakes on that immediately, but I’m sure the issue is not dead. At this point, if and when we do get this marriage thing going on, my problem would be figuring out how NOT to invite my awful boss. I work in a VERY small office, and would happily invite everyone, except him. GAH! But I guess I’ll have to burn that bridge when I get to it (to coin a phrase). Good luck with the lobster-stuffed cheesecake. Does THAT freeze well?
TOWN BICYCLE! Oh yes, I’m not sure about the poisonous aunt, but everyone’s had a ride on the town bike.
Personally, I think you should get a part time job so you can contribute more to pot-smoking, boob-swinger causes - I mean, you don’t need to sleep or anything do you?