When dreams meet reality
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Guest blog by Tammy S
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The last wedding I went to before I started planning my own was like walking into a dream. The food was great, the decor was beautiful, the speeches were funny and short and sweet. Including the bridal party there were just over 50 people there, all laughing and chatting, dancing to the sounds of a jazz band wafting around Durban’s Mitchell Park. It was, in a word, sublime. I knew that I wanted the same kind of vibe – a gentle, cosy atmosphere where people could enjoy each other’s company and celebrate the love between the bride and groom. Lovely stuff.
So, before we started adding up the relatives, my guy and me had based our plans on the idea of 75 guests. That was 25 from each family and 25 friends. Sounds reasonable yes? Well, reality hit and right about now I’d like to sit my grandparents down and discuss their apparent lack of contraceptive knowledge and what it’s doing to my wedding budget. That goes for my guy’s grandparents too. Except I suppose we wouldn’t be here if they had turned on the TV instead of turning off the lights… sigh. When I say we both come from large families, I mean between us we have close on 100 people – that’s just our immediate families plus grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins. No partners, no dear old great aunts, no family friends. And none of our own friends either for that matter. What’s a girl to do?
A friend suggested that we each make our own lists of who we want there and then compare them. Whoever is on both lists gets an invite. Which sounds very reasonable in theory, but in practice there is no way that either of us would be happy to leave anyone off the list. Not the grampa whose favourite party trick is getting people to “pull my finger”. Not the aunt who makes cheap remarks about everyone’s clothes. Not even the friend that we know is going to drink way too much and start chatting up our uncles. Can you picture anyone of these characters behaving like the sophisticated guests I dreamed of? Not likely. Right now it looks like the number is closer to 150 and my dream of an intimate little jazz band affair has gone down the tubes!
Still, dreams can be adapted, and all I really want is to spend my day with the people I love and who love me. I guess if I’m lucky enough to have so many of them then I really don’t have anything worth complaining about, however many times I have to change my plans :)
Hey there!
We had exactly the same problem! My Mom is one of 6, and each of those 6 have 3 kids (my cousins). My guy’s Mom is one of 6 too and so too do each of those 6 have 2. So by the time we’ve added up families, before our own dear friends and family friends, we’ve hit the 88 mark.
What we’ve decided to do is to cut the cousin’s right off the list. It’s not because we dont love them, we do. It’s not because we dont want them there, we do. It really is only because number 1. our venue can only hold 100 max and number 2. we simply cannot afford 150 people – not in this day and age with the price of EVERYTHING going up.
It may sound brutal, but now, without the extra cousins, we’re on a comfortable 107, and that includes our close friends, immediate families and good family friends. I know I’m going to come under a lot of heat from my family when half of them dont receive invites to the wedding, but I’m going to be honest with them and explain our situation.
It’s not an easy choice to make, but at the end of the day it’s about you and your guy and what makes you two happy, not accommodating everybody else.
Well then our wedding is by far the smallest, we added up all our closest friends and family, and we came to 40 people. We are not inviting people we only speak to once a year. We are only inviting people that are very close to us, and people that really mean something to us. NOt that the other people dont mean something to us. BUT we only want to share our day with people we really get along with. Afterall it is about us, and who we want to share it with…
Especially becoz we are having a picnic, we decided on the small and intimate wedding! Although my parents both have BIG families, we are only inviting that many people..
I think your wedding would be gr8! As will ours….
We are also trying to keep ours small, we’re sitting around 60 people,and about 50 angry people! But we decided if we haven’t seen the person in a year and they live in the same town, then why would we HAVE to invite them? It’s made cutting back a whole lot easier!
I agree, but people don’t see it that way! After I got engaged, someone at my old job said to me “I hope you’re inviting all of us!”. Um…right, and why would I invite twenty people, plus partners, who I work with and have never seen outside of work in three years? I’m inviting exactly three people from that job, people who I actually was friends with. Luckily I don’t work there anymore, so if they get into a tizz, boohoo. And I have a small family and so does Mr HS. So I’m doing ok!
Our families are huge, and we see all of them, all the time! No getting out of inviting this mob… :)