The Wedding Planners

No matter how many people you hire to play a part on your wedding day, the true worker will always be you and your partner. Weddings are stressful, tiring, confusing and time-consuming. You're expected to know everything as if you'd been married 200 times like Larry King. You'll find yourself lagging behind at times and at other times people will make you feel like you have so much to do and so little time to do it, your wedding will be a mess. Yes, I know that the wedding's less than 2 months away- stop tell me!

There aren't too many things I can pinpoint as being particularly stressful - I know at the very start finding venues was a bit of a hassle - but beyond that, wedding stress is really caused but a compilation of small tasks. But beyond a doubt, the most stressful part for me was finalizing a guest list.

Anybody who has gotten married and actually had a modest budget understands the complications involved in finalizing a guest list. My guest list can be divided into 3 main categories - parents' list, family and friends. When my fiance and I drafted our initial guest lists we had about 150 names. We simply could not afford that. We toyed with quite a few numbers, including 60, 70 80, 100 and 120. In the end we found the best compromise to be about 100 people. That left me with the task of reducing my guest list to 50. Now, my parent's list alone was over 40 initially, so you appreciate the gravity of my dilemma. I got my parents to reduce their list, and after weeks and weeks of groaning I finally got my list down to near 50, after omitting some folks with an extremely heavy heart. It had to be done.

In the days when we were printing invitations, the list still had not been finalized. After we sent out most of the invitations, the list still had not been finalized. I couldn't remove my conscience about taking off some of my friends. It had to be done. So even at this point, there are some persons who I really want to be there, but it's just not possible.

Now at the same time, I find it rather difficult to say to people, "I'm sorry, but the numbers just didn't allow me to invite you." So to a large degree, my resolution has been to just not say anything to the people who I couldn't invite, even though I'd love to see the at the actual wedding, and despite them not being able to come to the reception.

I suppose this is where friendship is tested. It must be hard to resist the urge to ask, "How could he not invite me?", or "Why her and not me?", or to say "I guess he doesn't want there." If ever you find yourself having these thoughts, and the people who are getting married aren't extremely close to you (and sometimes, even if they are), do this one thing - get over yourself.

:-)