Sounds kind of ominous, doesn’t it — like an elopement note to disapproving parents or the opening line of a spiteful letter — but it’s not. It’s simply a trick of the publishing world. See, I’m writing this column as a hot, single lady, but by the time it’s in print, I’ll be old and married. Married, because of the ceremony; old, because of the planning process.
We’re simple people, my soon-to-be hubby and I, and we started out with a simple vision: immediate family and a few close friends, a small ceremony, the reception at a local pub. It was a concept that we felt embodied our values and would be symbolic of the frugal, environmentally-friendly lifestyle we have chosen to live. It was a concept that lasted all of one week — right up until we made our first attempt at the guest list.
We started with a grouping entitled, “Even if Hell Freezes Over” (EIHFO for short), to designate those folks we felt we absolutely had to have at our wedding, and realized right away that our meant-to-be-short list included 56 people —14 more than the pub we were considering could comfortably seat. We tried whittling away bodies, but there was no dead weight, which meant we had two choices: elope or find a bigger venue.
Just for fun, we decided to expand the guest list to see how big it would be if we invited everyone with whom we would enjoy celebrating our official union. After hitting page five and close to 400 guests, we abandoned that pursuit in favor of creating segmented lists, beginning with essential personnel (the EIHFO list) and working from there, grouping friends of similar backgrounds together so that we could either include or exclude an entire population with a simple checkmark or a large X. This just goes to show that wedding planning is a brutal business that forces us to rate our friends and family in a manner normally reserved for teenagers in John Hughes movies and Aaron Spelling television dramas. It was a harsh process, but in the name of love and a good party, we slogged our way through it.
Finally, after much debate, deliberation, advanced calculus and dart throwing, we wound up with 160 guests, 140 of whom will be gathering with us tomorrow (in weekly mag time, that’s last Saturday), placing us only 300% above our initial target of 42 — a figure that would be perfectly acceptable if we were, say, the Federal Government or the Portland Public School system. And I think it’s going to work all right for us, too.
Granted, we had to leave out some good friends and much of my extended family, but we’re hoping everyone will understand, and certainly, anyone who’s been through the process before will.
Besides, if I had to make one more place card or wine charm or seating chart, or organize our potluck to feed a couple hundred more mouths — oh yes, we’re crazy enough to be managing all of that stuff on our own —the only guest we’d be worrying about would be E.L. Opement, and the opening line of this column would instead be the first line of many an email.
Instead, however, I expect that everything will run smoothly, the ceremony will be beautiful and that I will be happily, blissfully married by 4 o’clock tomorrow afternoon — which, by the time you read this, will be five days ago.
Belinda Ray is a homeschooling mother and freelance writer who finds time to write when her children and their friends have lightsaber battles in the yoga room (but only if the laundry is already folded and everyone’s been fed).