PARENTS GETTING THEIR PEEPS IN

The whole point of having this shindig is to ask those who love and support you (and your parents’ friends) to come and bear witness to your declaration of unbounded love. If you are able to persevere through the invitation acquisition process (foreshadowing unsavory times), all you have to do is decide who to send those invitations to. However, there are numerous factors to consider during this process, related to other aspects of the glorious event planning.

The first major step is to make a rough estimate of how many people you want in attendance. The number needs to account for the variable cost of each guest, in order to keep within budget.

“Variable cost, why?” Christa asked.

“Having limited funds means we can’t throw the event of the decade, but we have a chance at the best merriment-to-expense ratio this year, and that is why each feature and guest added to the festivities must be considered, relative to merriment and cost,” I replied.

“So if cousin Stinky isn’t bringing $42.50 of good times, we aren’t inviting him?”

“There is a discount for blood relations.”

The number of guests must also take into consideration the physical confines of the church and reception site. You must remember that an open bar, lit candles, and some guests’ unwillingness to forgo polyester does increase the chance of fire, and the legal ramifications could force you to return some of your gifts to pay for court proceedings. I unsuccessfully tried to pay for my last doctor’s visit with crystal candlesticks. I suspect you wouldn’t get much further with a lawyer.

It is often helpful to try and assess where your parents stand with their guest list. I sent my mom (The MG) my best guess for who they might invite, selectively chosen. She replied with a list of their friends and my extended family members, divided into three tiers. Tier one indicated people we “must invite,” tier two meant “want to invite,” and tier three was “should invite but expendable.” Impressive! I do believe you are my mother and that microeconomics can be inherited.

Wait. The MG had already completed a three-tier guest-ranking system. What was she spending her free time doing now? She was not only reacting she was anticipating! She probably had suggestions documented on note cards for checklist items still two months in the future. She did mention that she had been to the library to get wedding guide books, and if I know the public library system, those will probably span at least the past half century. So not only are those note cards color-coded and alphabetically stored, they probably have bibliographical footnotes.

If you see parallels to your own mother, your best bet is to find her a very time-consuming hobby right before you announce your engagement, something like foster parenting for three-month-old Indonesian quadruplets.

It was a completely different situation for Christa, since she didn’t know very many of her parent’s friends, neighbors, or The MOB’s fellow church workers. Christa called to ask The MOB if she could provide us with an approximate number and the names of people she would like to invite. The MOB said she could try and put together a formal list. She then began to tell Christa about people she had already invited, including someone she had run into that morning at Bob Evans. This list included several people from her church, who all expressed interest in coming, but who, she was certain, wouldn’t come, and we didn’t need to formally invite. I knew from the look on Christa’s face, as she listened, that the news was going to be interesting.

Christa got off the phone and said “I don’t know what to say. She’s invited people but told me not to formally invite them.”

“I don’t know if Excel has a function for that,” I replied.

It is interesting to note that, at no point during any vows I’ve heard or read, does it explicitly state an obligation to humor your intended’s immediate family members in times of insanity. It is probably why they just traded head of cattle for daughters in the old days. It was a simple, elegant exchange, free of in-laws.

I was able to use The MG’s numbers to figure how many of our friends we needed to invite to keep her comfortably at tier two. In fairness, we needed to give that same number of invitations to The MOB. However, her potential invitees had to consider the three hours of travel needed to attend. This distance led to a higher percentage of declines, as the wedding grew closer. For every “can not attend” notice we received back, there was another potential couple to send one to. The MOB had her seats, and she intended to use them. She would send Christa e-mails regarding who to invite and the likelihood of their attending, including a medical history (“it’s only mild hemorrhoids”) and resume of other road trips completed (“went to visit his daughter in Toledo just last week”). His ass cushion better match our color scheme.

There was no problem with trying to fill the seats. At some point, though, when the guests received their invites two weeks before the event and had already missed the RSVP date by three weeks, they would have to infer the fill-in guest label that was assigned to them, and that’s not tasteful either.
- Drew Lloyd
From "Will You?" to "I Do.": A Groom's Tale of Survival