Not going to go...

What is it with my family that they want to create drama?

I called MW Tux to make sure all the groomsmen had been fitted as our deadline date was yesterday. Of course, my brother hadn't been fitted yet. So I sent him an email asking why he hadn't gone down.

10 minutes later, I get an email from my mom saying that since she was undecided if she was coming, my brother decided he wasn't going to come unless she was going to come.

So apparently just because its my wedding isn't enough pull for my own brother. So I wrote them both back and said that its an invitation not a subpeona and that if they both didn't want to come, fine whatever. I wasn't going to force them to go. That they should only go if they want to go... which apparently they didn't.

Since we have to give our headcount to the venue on Friday, I'm going to not include them. I'm sick of all this drama. Either people need to come or not come, but I am not going to beg people to go.

the fun will never end

My friend Jessica and I were talking and Maya's daughter's party came up. She said it was nice. Then she asked if they had RSVP'd for the wedding. I said No. Why do you know if they are coming? She said that they were waiting for me to call them. That if I called them, they would come. I was like thats weird. Why couldn't they just send the RSVP card back? Jess said she didn't know but thought they might need reassurance that it was okay to come.

So I said I would call them tomorrow. Jess said, hey call them now and call me back.

So I agreed.

I got Maya on the phone and she basically told me that they aren't coming. So I said okay, bye.

So I called Jess back and asked why I would have to call to have them tell me they arent coming? She said she had no idea, she really thought they were coming.

I'm just really pissed I had to call them. I guess she still wants to be bitchy.

extras

What is with people wanting to bring random people to my wedding?!!

Edit: Everyone who received an invite had the persons invited listed on the invite. No one with the exception of two people got an invite that said "and guest".

So if the invite says Mr. and mrs. Jack and Jane Doe. That doesn't mean Jane can bring her friend Sue or her two kids Billy and Molly. That means that she can bring Jack unless she checks with me first and gets permission to subsitute for someone else.
oh and kids were not listed at all. Why? because they weren't invited!! Nope not at all. I'm sure they thought we were silently inviting kids because mostly everyone has added on their children, but you are mistaken.

No you can't bring your best friend if your husband can't come. I would be willing to pay $100 for your husband to come party with us, but not some random person I've never met... oh and you want to bring your two kids? to an evening wedding with an open bar out in the country surrounded by open vineyards (with no fences!!) where they can wander off and never be seen again?

um no. The venue isn't exactly kid friendly.

i should have wrote at the bottom of my invite, no substitutions or exchanges allowed. Most everyone I've talked to has assumed that if the invite is for two people, they can just bring any two people, it doesn't have to be who is listed on the invite. Plus.. kids are never mentioned on an invite, so if it doesn't have your two kids names on it, thats okay. We really did silently invite them.. no need to check with us before you send your RSVP back.

Oh and your neighbor/cousin/best friend/old science teacher will be in town at the same time? and you want to bring them with you? Um no. This actually costs us money per person. This isn't just cake and punch in my backyard.

If you have a new boyfriend from the time we sent the invites out a month ago, he is not invited. I'm sorry but even people in my bridal party who are single aren't bringing dates... why because its a lot of money per person.. and we don't have rich relatives paying for this. We are paying for this. I wish people would just check before inviting extra people.

Random people

what is with people adding random people!

first a couple of friends wanted to bring their kids

then we got some friends added to rsvps

now aarons dads friend wants to bring his teenage kids without asking

Declines...

We got another decline today.. and it was kind of surprising. It was from a friend of mine that I was sure would be able to come, she declined. :(

Yesterday we found out that Aaron's aunt and cousins can't come in from Iowa. We were thinking at least 3-4 people would come from there... but then their ride just declined. So that must mean that no one is coming. The other decline was one of Aaron's coworkers.

I also think its weird how people CAN'T READ. Seriously. We invited one family: father and mother and the son. The son still lives at home and told Aaron's dad that he wasn't invited. What? I know we wrote his name on the invite..

*sigh*

So now Aaron's dad wants us to send him an invite. You know I know we ordered extras, but we are already running out. My aunt's dog ate hers, so I sent her another one. Which I really shouldn't have done. I should have just sent her all the relevant info.

I just got a couple back, so I need to call/email some people and find out what I did wrong.

My mom won't come to the wedding

My mom has been uninvited from the wedding/refuses to come because she has decided that if her billion friends can't come, then she can't come. She was giving us $5,000 (supposedly. She often decides to just cut me off at the last minute/take stuff away/change her mind.. anyways) like she gave my sister.

Then she decided she didn't like the direction I was going with my wedding (nothing that she liked), she got more and more critical and bitchy as the days went on. Then she decided that she wanted to invite more than the 8 people she had originally given us and her list ballooned to 30 people, then 50 people. Those 50 people at $60 a head is already 3,000 meaning that Aaron and I would be paying for the majority anyways. We had wanted her to pay for the entire food/drink budget which she agreed to.

Our original list was about 85 people including 4 for my mom - which we expanded to 8 to make her happy (85*60 = 5100 - perfectly within the 5,000 budget) - but then she got out of control. Aaron's dad isn't inviting anyone at all. So we though 8 people (1 whole table of people i didn't know) was more than generous. Considering thats about 10% of her budget. Then when I brought up the fact that those 50 people were costing $3,000, and that it was $60 per person, she said they were worth the $60 a person and handed me a list of 10 more names that we just HAD to add.

So yeah, she's not coming. Considering she has single handedly doubled our original guest list with people we don't even know... and she's started promising them they can come despite my pleas for her to not tell anyone that they could come and to wait til we figure everything out.

spoiled brat

I had to go over to my mom's house tonight to drop something off. She totally blew off our Florist Appointment today, even though she was supposed to go. I sat there waiting for her for 15 minutes before we had to start the appointment.

So I get to her house and she starts arguing with me over money.

Then she said that if she can't invite anyone she wants, then she :

1. won't come to the wedding

and

2. won't give us any money.

Well Aaron and I talked it over last night and he said that he was half betting she wouldn't give us the money anyways because she always gets mad at me and threatens to cut me off and etc. So he wasn't really counting on her money anyways - which i thought we were.. but I guess we aren't, and if the guest list goes up all the other stuff will go up too.. like:

We'd need more Chair covers
The Cake costs would go up
We'd need more Favors
We'd need more centerpieces
We'd need more china
We'd need more linens
We'd need more invitations
..etc

and once we factor in all that, her offer of money isn't going to be THAT much and if she doesn't understand that, then whatever...

and if she doesn't want to come to my wedding because she's being a spoiled brat because ALL of her million friends can't come then I'm not going to stress over it. She is NOT going to ruin my wedding like she did my sister's wedding - by throwing a tantrum over every little thing, getting drunk and making a few scenes.

Why can't my mom just be happy for me?!? and try not to stress me out.

guest list issues

So I went to my mom's today so we could work on printing out the Save the Date notices. While I was there, I figured it was the perfect time to talk to her about how much her extra guests were going to cost. I kind of figured that once she saw that each person's food and drink alone was $65.. not including favors, cake ..etc.

So basically she again demanded to know who was on my list. So I said that its my wedding and I want MY friends there. That we were more than happy to give her ONE table of people. Eventhough by doing this she wasn't really giving us $5000 like she keeps saying she is, she is really only giving us $4350... because I never would invite people that I dont know. Plus that doesn't include the other 20 people she wants to invite.. She doesn't really care that those 30 people are costing us $2000.

I didn't show her the guest list because I don't want her going down MY list and crossing MY guests off. She can cross her own guests off.. but not mine.

Then she starts demanding why Aaron's Dad isn't giving us money - like he needs to chip in because SHE wants to invite her entire work. He isn't inviting ANY personal people - except his best friend and his wife. The money is the reason we want a small wedding. We thought we could just double what my mom gave us and we would be okay.. now what she is giving us isnt even going to cover the food and drinks - especially if she keeps inviting people. I am sooo worried that we are going to end up in debt to cover this more elaborate wedding... or we are going to have to cut something out completely.

So as i'm leaving, she hands me a list of 4 more people she just HAS to invite.

Apparently telling her the cost per person, showing her how much we can afford to invite that is within her budget.. she still just doesn't care if we go into debt. In fact she told us that we should just not get flowers or a photographer to cover the cost.

I'm sorry I'd rather have flowers and a photographer than a bunch of people I do not know at my wedding and that don't know me.

In fact when we were printing out the save the date stuff, she looks at it after its already done and at the magnetand says - "this doesn't have my name on it. How will my friends know who you are?"

Well if they dont know who I am... they don't belong at my wedding.

.. I am going to go crazy.

my mom and the guest list...

Our wedding is in September 2008 (so a whole year away).. however I am having some guest list issues when it comes to my mom.

* Our venue has a minimum guest count of 75 people, so if we have less than that, we pay for the 75 people anyways. We are paying them a set amount per person for an open bar of beer, wine and champagne (its a vineyard so they don't serve hard alcohol).
* Some of the caterers we spoke to require a 100 person minimum and so we figure thats about normal and plan on cutting the list off at 100 because:
a. We can't really afford more than
b. We didn't really want a large wedding anyways. When we first started looking, we kind of thought our guest list would be around 50.. 75 maximum.

That being said, we wouldn't mind going over a little bit over 100, we don't want to be really rigid about it and tell our good friends that they cant come because we are over 100 people.

We are at 126 people right now - that doesn't include children - other than flower girls and ring bearer and no dates for single guests that are from the area and would know tons of other people. This isn't the prom and we aren't paying for dinner for your date that you only have just because you didn't want to come to a wedding alone. If you love us enough, you will come and celebrate with us without bringing a security blanket with you.

So the problem is ... My mom.

My mom is a supervisor at her work and every time I talk to her.. she just has someone else she HAS to invite. She keeps saying, oh well they might not come anyways, but .. seriously what if they do? My sister said, well no one really came to mine so just let her invite whoever and its not worth fighting over so early on.. - her wedding was 8 hours away... mine is seriously 15 minutes.. if that. I'm sure some people won't come, but I think a lot of people from her work might considering its so close, plus we have free food and drinks.

So I told my mom that I really wish that she wouldn't promise that people can go when we don't know if we can afford it

Right now we have 126 people on our guest list.

I want to at least do a A list B list thing, or at least get her to give us more money to pay for the extra people.

I figured she would understand the whole money side of it, because she's the one that told us not to spend that much on just one day.

So she gets all huffy and demands to know who is on our list and how many people his dad is inviting - for the record 0. We have of course his dad's best friend and his wife. Plus his grandparent's best friends/neighbors .. so maybe we say his family's extra people totals: 4.

Then she asked who was on the list, so I said - combined family totals 40 people, plus friends, a few of Aaron's co-workers and some of hers. So she said - Well Aaron (fiance) gets to invite his coworkers, why can't I invite all of mine. Aaron is inviting 4 of his co-workers and their spouses. My mom wants to invite 40 people so far... so when I complained about her guest list before, she crossed off their spouses... which I'm sorry you can't do!

My mom is trying to invite every person she's ever met, plus people who have invited her to their wedding. Like she just went to a wedding and now she wants that guy on our list.

Now I know that its awhile away until we really have to tone down our guest list, i just want her to stop telling people they are invited... That way the A list, B list thing won't be so apparent.

Is that so hard to understand?

I'm going to send our Save the Dates out in a about a month or so for our Sept 08 wedding. The first wave of Save the Dates, will go to close friends, family and out of state friends. We aren't sending them yet to her friends, we'll send them later on.

and guest

So I was talking to Aaron's aunt tonight, and she was telling me that I should plan on inviting all the single people with a guest. Its been something I've been milling over, but unless they are someone that really wouldnt know anyone else at the wedding, I'm not sure I want to pay x amount of dollars for some random person I dont know and have never met before, just so someone can have someone to dance with.

It would make my already large guest list, twice as big. I don't mind inviting plus ones if they have been dating for a reasonable amount of time (I don't want people bringing strangers to the wedding.. like oh we met yesterday!!.. great thanks for bringing them to my wedding and making me pay $50 for their dinner.) If they are living together, engaged or been dating more than x months at the time I send the invites out, I'll send them with a plus one (but I'll find out thier name first). I am NOT sending out people with the wording - and guest. If they don't know their name beforehand, they aren't coming.

I hate giving out "and Guests" - that wording is so open to interpretation. I would love for them to bring their serious significant others, I do not want them to use that wording to bring just any guest they want like- neighbors, kids, cousins, random person they met yesterday, their best friend or any other person that is NOT their date.

Plus I'd rather take that extra seat and give it to someone who I actually know and love.

Is it wrong to invite people who are single as singles? or am I required to open the invitiation for them to bring someone?

That being said, any person that I know won't really know a lot of people at the wedding, I'll include and invitation for a guest. I don't want them to feel alienated... but my friends, who all know each other, would it be wrong to just send them a singular invitation and maybe accept guests on a case by case basis?