Warning: long and somewhat personal tale.
I’m getting married two weeks from tommorrow. It’s going to be a marrige for legal reasons - my girlfriend and I have been living together for three years now. We aren’t going to be having children. Being married won’t really change anything about our relationship - our main reason is to save money on taxes, and to get her on my health plan. (Hope this doesn’t sound to cynical - we really do love each other and plan to spend the rest of our life together, but never felt we needed any legal recognition from the state to do so).
My fiencee is a wedding videographer. She’s been making wedding videos for a decade, and I’ve been an assistant on many of her jobs. We’ve seen hundreds of marrige ceremonies, and the parties afterwards. We’re both pretty jaded about the whole thing, and really have no desire to have a big party associated with what is for us just a civil cerimony to change our legal status.
Here’s the biggie: my fiencee has chronic fatigue syndrom. She’s had to almost completely stop working for the last two years, and spent most of last year bed-ridden. She’s recovered now to the point where she can go shopping, clean the house, and do the occasional wedding job, but a few hours of work still knockes her out for days afterwards. This is the other reason we don’t want a party or a lot of people there - she doesn’t have the endurance and would rather rest. And I’m generally antisocial and don’t enjoy parties, especially when they’re in my honor.
So - our original plans were to treat the wedding like running en arrand - stop in at the judge’s office in the morning, go through the ceremony, and be done with it. No big deal. Simple, right?
Well, first her family wanted to have a get-together afterwards. Norhing special, just her parents, aunt and grandmother, and sister and brother-in-law, for a little party at her sister’s place. We warned them that she might have to leave early to go home and rest. Still no big deal.
Enter my parents. I know my parents, I grew up with them. I was tempted to not tell them till after the wedding was over, but my fiencee called them and invited them up. Big mistake. Before we know it they were putting together plans for a big fancy reception ceremony, with dozens of family members and guests invited - exactly what we didn’t want. When I called them and told them that we didn’t want a big deal made about any of this, and there wasn’t much sense in inviting family members from across the country for a 5 minute legal ceremony, and neither my fiencee or I had any interest in sitting through a reception party after having already taped hundreds of them, and that she would be likelt to pass out during an extende dparty, they got offended. At firsth they wouldn’t have anything more to do with it, wouldn’t even come to the wedding. My fiencee had to call them and explain again that we’d love to have them there, but we didn’t want a big party, before they agreed to come after all.
My parents called my brother and his wife and invited them to the wedding. I had already spoken with my brother prior to this, and we had both agreed that there wasn’t much point in their coming down (as he doesn’t own a car and never leaves New York anymore, and it’s not a big deal anyway), but my parents insisted on picking them up and driving him down. Ok, I don’t mind seeing my brother again, so we called up my future sister-in-law and warned her to expect two more people.
Then yesterday my dad called me and informed me that my uncle Kenny and his wife were also coming. What the hell? I was only vaugely aware I even had an uncle Kenny, having met him perhaps twice in my life when I was very young. I don’t even remember what this guy looks like, now my parents had went and invited him to what was supposed to be a small, informal party. They had already made their hotel reservations, and my dad wasn’t taking no for an answer.
Then today my mother called up my fiencee’s sister, got her answering machine, and left some kind of confused message about a “rehersal dinner”. Again - what the hell? We’re trying to call them back to find out what they’re arranging behind our backs here.
Two weeks to go, and this was supposed to be a short civil ceremony. When my brother got married, he gave my parents a day’s notice. Now I know why.
) On just previewing I noticed your parents reaction. If they say that again, I would say “Yes, and she could be worse, it would be a terrible thing if we had to cancel the party altogether. Stress tends to make these things worse, y’know.”