inklingfair There’s this Reddit thread going around about a list of reasons why certain people aren’t invited to one bride’s wedding. With our own wedding six months away and all the stress of planning, budgeting, coordinating, and slowly going insane bearing down on the both of us, I *get* that bride. I feel her exasperation at people who feel entitled to an invite, her “I need to seat a hundred guests without causing the Red Wedding and act and look like the gracious, calm, collected almost-wife everyone expects me to be AND you’re giving me the passive aggressive treatment about not sweetly soliciting your RSVP?!?!! [redacted because dragons]”
Yeah. Listen. We do not “have it all together”. I barely know which end is up on a boutonniere (do you? I just pin and let gravity take its course). This is hardly a Kim and Kanye bash. We certainly can’t afford to put up a wall of white roses for you to snap your #weddingselfie against, much less invite five hundred people, half of which who may be yawning at the ceremony and private-tweeting about how un-chic the bar decor is an hour later.
But consider this – if you *are* invited, it’s because:
1. Even if you do display said disgraceful wedding guest behavior, we love each other enough that we can tolerate you calling our bullshit and you can take us calling out your dickishness.
2. We don’t mind you seeing us ugly-crying at the altar because you’ve seen us ugly-cry before and you were there to bop us over the head and help us come to our good senses.
3. You will gamely play silly games and dance silly dances because you don’t mind looking silly and you’re really, truly happy to party with us and not just dress up and stand in a corner like a perfect paper doll.
4. You won’t bitch about the menu or the flowers or the music selection because you know what makes us tick and what we enjoy (together and individually) and why we chose what we chose.
5. We are passionate about similar things and have worked together on issues that matter to us. Human rights. Climate action. Social entrepreneurship. Digital activism. Superhero racial and gender diversity. Exposing the Troy Dyers of this planet for the whimpsters that they are.
6. You’re a geek/nerd/misfit we love. We ought to stick together through mysterious grown-up rituals like these and subvert what we can given the chance. I, for one, will have a TARDIS somewhere in the vicinity.
7. You were on our parents’ list. And you are there for a good reason. You were probably there when we were knee-high, running around pantsless and pooping everywhere at will, and you gave good advice, love, support, and the occasional well-deserved scolding that helped us wind up where we are today. (Not totally messed up and actually better than okay.) The least we can do is treat you to a good dinner and a show.
For people who fit the above criteria and still were not invited, to paraphrase Grandpa in The Princess Bride, where’s it written that life is fair? If it were, we’d have an extravaganza with you on a ship to Mars (the ultimate honeymoon destination) with dancing bears and bottomless pan-galactic gargle blasters. (That said, I wonder if the Bayani Brew Crew can improvise those.)
But we hope you don’t take it against us. We hope you’ll still stick around for the next chapter and be friends with us. Because the real thing begins after the wedding. We hope you’ll be there to witness our marriage when we’re maybe at each other’s throats or hosting disaster housewarming dinners or chasing after screaming pantsless kids. We hope to ugly-cry with you and geek out with you and be up in arms with you against global warming and for more bike lanes and bringing Firefly back. We hope to be there for you as you are for us, as a family.
We do. Oh yes, we do.
Photo by Kevin Yudhistira Alloni on Unsplash
