The Mail Box Blues

Fifth in the 'Father of the Bride' series

SAN DIEGO—After a while, I dreaded going to the mailbox.

So what is the rule? You send out wedding invitations and at least 20% will be regrets, right? That’s what you think. Try throwing a wedding in February when it is cold and snowing around half of the known world. They all think that San Diego is like Miami in the winter. They all want to come.

There are little lessons that you learn in life...usually the hard way...and this was one of them.

I had worked very diligently on the wedding guest list to pare it down to a manageable size. Of course, there were those virtually uncontrollable aspects such as the in-laws-to-be’s list and the bride and groom’s list of friends and associates.

I must say, my new in-laws were very sparing in their list, but they have a very large family. My son-in-law-to-be works in a large medical group and most of his associates are married. Just multiply by two. Then there were the couple’s friends, some married and most with significant others, which I found out meant they might have had two dates with the same person. I guess today that is significant enough.

As it happens, our relatives come in no short supply either. Even though the years have taken their toll, with only one Aunt left, there seemed to be no shortage of cousins, first, second and third. My friend Gary claims I have at least one cousin in every state and he may be right. I also have them in France, too. And yes they were coming even before an invitation was mailed.

Guess it snows in Paris, every decade or so.

There are invitations you want to send and there are those you "have to" send. We had our fair share of both. At the risk of offending some friends and relatives, we spent many long hours discussing who should be on our master list, how many invitations should be ordered, who could safely be cut. How can you invite one sister, but not her brother; one associate, but not his partner; one board member, but not the whole list, etc., etc. ?

Looking over my computerized master list, my daughter complained that she didn’t even know cousin so and so, but I had been invited to her wedding and her children’s weddings. How could I not reciprocate? I accused my daughter of inviting people she had just met on the street and in a few cases that was so. She just had to invite most of her runners group, she said.

For my part, I had to invite a number of second cousins, but they wouldn’t come, I reasoned, they have young families and too many expenses. Sure. And they wanted to bring their kids, too.

And so it went. We eliminated neighbors, old friends with whom we were out of touch, some family to whom we weren’t speaking, business associates, board members, congregants, and so on. It wasn’t that we had any animus toward any of them, there just wasn’t a hall big enough to house them all, not to mention money to pay for it all.

We decided that among the invited guests, we would only invite out of towners to the rehearsal dinner and the morning after brunch. That didn’t eliminate many folks since the groom’s family and most of our own were all out of towners.

Then the rsvp’s started flowing in. To my surprise, they were mainly positive. Wonderful! The Wrobels are coming in from northern France. Fantastic! Stephan is flying in from London. Half of Fort Meyer/Naples are planning to attend. From Rhode Island to Michigan, Seattle to Georgia, the affirmative responses poured in. There was nary a negative response.

It was an embarrassment of riches. My wife and daughter felt well loved.
I felt poorer with every trip to the mailbox.Almost no one said that magic
word: "NO!"

Then there were the calls asking us if one guest could invite a new friend, or be accompanied by a sister we had never met. One cousin wanted her young daughter and her new beau to be invited. Several questioned whether the invitation to this "glamorous" black tie affair could be extended to their very young children.

What was even harder was trying to figure out the seating chart for 307 guests. I have 15 Greene first cousins who graced us with their presence. The tables maxed out at 12. Politically, who should be left out of that mix? That kept me awake for several nights. I couldn’t have two tables of Greene first cousins, because the Club’s extended ballroom could only hold 31 tables and we were at our limit. No sense fooling around with the fire department.

Mixing and matching personalities is an art. We all worked at it for days. My daughter, a bit of a match-maker herself, wanted to be sure to seat just the right young singles with just the right young singles. That was an ever changing production.

I must say that as father-of-the-bride all the seating problems occupied more of my energy than the hours spent hoping he would pop the question. Being an active father-of-the-bride is no easy chore. It’s not for sissies.
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