"We want a small wedding."
HA! Famous last words. When we had just started planning our wedding, Mr. Unicorn and I knew we didn't have the budget for a big, splashy wedding. We were totally fine with having a small, intimate affair, surrounded by immediate family and closest friends. At most, we figured we'd have eighty guests, and maybe seventy of those would actually be able to attend. We happily put together a guest list and submitted it to each set of parents for revision.
That's when reality came crashing down on us like a ton of bricks. We were immediately met with outrage, hurt feelings, and icy, snide comments reminding us that Great-Aunty Marge is family, too, even if whe haven't seen her in the last decade and a half.
Tails between our legs, we went back to the drawing board. Several drafts and much hair-pulling and teeth-gnashing later, we had a grand total of--are you ready?--TWO HUNDRED GUESTS! For those of you who are as mathematically challenged as I am, that's more than TWICE the number of guests we started with. How did the list get so huge??? Well it turns out, if you invite Aunt Lucy, you HAVE to invite Cousin Geoff. And if you invite Cousin Geoff, you simply CANNOT leave Cousin Macie off the list. And if Cousin Macie comes to the wedding, her husband and three children must come as well. And so on and so forth.
After tallying everyone up, I started packing my bags so we could elope Vegas-style.
Mr.Unicorn calmly pried the suitcase from my hands and assured me that this was just a tiny little speed bump in our plans.
Still, I can't help but feel a little nervous, especially as the date draws ever closer. My fears are well-justified, I think, given that my mother intends to cook for all these people and won't let us hire a caterer. Crazy? Yes. She also intends to purchase all the alcohol, food, favors, place settings, etc.
Which would not have been a totally harebrained idea had the number of guests been closer to seventy.
In the end, it's not like we had much choice. Keeping our guest list small would have resulted in a lot of ruffled feathers. Did we do the right thing by expanding our guest list? What would you have done?
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