Offbeat Bride by Ariel Meadow Stallings

Author:Ariel Meadow Stallings
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Basic Books
Published: 2019-09-16T16:00:00+00:00

“Just one extra guest” and other famous last words

If the family side of the guest list was getting long, the friend side was even worse. Unless we knew their significant other quite well, guests invited to the ceremony didn’t get plus-one invitations. This, of course, caused no end of problems. Friends wanted to bring roommates we didn’t know! Friends wanted to bring boyfriends we’d barely met! And when we said no, other friends stepped up to tell us we were being unfair.

That’s when I almost lost it. I freaked out on one infinitely well-intentioned friend, snapping at him via e-mail: “Can I request that this be the last time we talk about the guest list and your thoughts about who we should and shouldn’t be inviting?”

… Meow! But in the last few weeks before the wedding, the guest-list issue started feeling seriously fucked up, and the pressure was intense from both friends and family. Both my fiancé and I got a little freaked out that what we had envisioned as a relatively intimate, focused ceremony and dinner had bloated to about a third larger than we wanted—with people still wanting to make it bigger.

And, of course, all this happened months after the invites went out, months after folks could have talked to us. Just one extra guest here, just one extra guest there. For some people, that’s just how weddings are. For me, it was not. I was undoubtedly rude to a few people, but I’m certainly not the only one. Offbeat reader Jennie remembers that she had “one person e-mail the day before to say he couldn’t come (with a crappy excuse), and that, I’m ashamed to admit, flipped my evil-bride switch, and I sent quite a nasty reply, asking how he was going to pay for the meal he was wasting.” In Chapter 30, “Staying Sane,” I contend that you will freak out at least once. For many people, it’s the guest list that gets them to that point.

Offbeat reader Leah recounts inviting one of her mother’s cousins and the cousin’s daughter. When she received their RSVP, she was dismayed to see that the cousin had written “probably 5” in the blank next to “Number of Guests.” Offbeat reader Amy remembers a casual acquaintance who expressed a lot of interest in the wedding and went so far as to offer to be best man. She and her husband hadn’t been planning to even invite the guy but made room on the guest list because his interest was so touching.

Amy remembers, “And then? Never showed up, never sent a card, never called, never made any effort at all to excuse his behavior or even talk to us ever again. I ran into him on the street a few months later and told him he owed us seventy-five dollars.”

Expect a few flaky types and a few party crashers. Almost every wedding has both, and a good club bouncer knows how to deal with grace and muscle.

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