the wedding: guest list

And now we've come full circle and I can write about what I thought I was going to write about, 54 posts ago... Dah dah dah dah. The Wedding.

I can feel the mixed reactions, I can hear the unweds, the non-weds and the ex-weds leaving at a steady pace, pausing only to click "stop following". And that's fine. Because I only ever wrote this little blog for me (and maybe some grandkids one day, they might find it interesting) and now little old me is swamped with wedding sh*t. I mean, stuff. Cause weddings are all fun and games and frills and frocks and lace and bubbles and cake, right? Yes, like most of you, I thought this was going to be great. I thought, "yay".

Before BB went nuts and proposed in the rain in NYC, the last time I'd thought about or dreamed of my wedding, I was about five years old. I still remember the dress I drew and the long, ruched gloves I considered obligatory and the fact that it all had to be made out of Crystal Barbie fabric... Anyone else remember the luminescent shimmery rainbow beauty that was Crystal Barbie's dress? I loved it.



To be totally honest, I did wonder (only once or twice, for about 20 seconds) about the kind of wedding I would've had with Ex. But because it was not an issue that was ever discussed, it was really just MY wedding I was wondering about, as opposed to OUR wedding.

Regardless, when BB and I got engaged and Lucy was irrefutably on my finger, I bought my first wedding magazine for the plane ride home! I won't lie; it gave me a huge thrill. I wondered whether people saw what I was reading, noticed the ring, realised that I was a woman in love, about to be married. I totally fell for it!

When I got home, I decided not to start planning our wedding until BB would be home. I had no idea what we wanted or had in mind, we’d never discussed it, and I didn’t feel like spending our precious Skype hours on wedding talk. The only thing we did was exchange guest lists. This was probably a good place to start, as the resultant numbers quickly left any ideas of a small, intimate wedding out in the cold.

BB comes from a big family. They are 14 if you only count the parents, siblings and dates. When you bring in Grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins, the number quickly jumps to 40. My family brings another 20 and if you then say we each invite 20 friends plus their partners the total is 100 before you know it. Now you give each set of parents a little leeway to invite other family / family friends and bam, we needed a venue for 150!

BB came home and after we got Christmas, New Years and living arrangements sorted, it was time to start planning this shindig of ours. I was very confident. I’m a super organised person. I can be quite the bargain hunter. I’ve never dreamt of a six-tier monster cake or a poufy Cinderella gown so this would be a cinch.

To recover my original idea of a low-key, heartfelt affair and also to keep costs down, I explored the idea of intimate ceremony, big party. Unfortunately most of the guests who wouldn’t make the cut for the ceremony, were far-flung family members and we were urged to consider that they couldn’t be expected to travel so far and then not be included in the whole deal. Which I thought was a fair comment.

My next alternative was a morning wedding. All the websites and magazines said that this was a sure way to cut costs as meals are cheaper and people drink less. Sadly, I soon discovered that the food and drinks bills were the least of my worries.