managing expectations
Managing everyone's expectations in the family around the wedding has been hard. It's like the people around us don't believe that we can organize anything, that we know what we want or that what we say is true - which is crazy, as the couple getting married? They think nothing is planned or accounted for, when it is. It is simply a very small and simple celebration.
People act like there is so much to prepare and act like it's overwhelming - when we are 20 people in total. We don't need decorations. We don't need catering. We aren't renting a location. We just want to get married, then to go to a restaurant and afterwards go to the family's place to celebrate after with a cake.
We had sent out a card weeks ago and some people in the family got offended that they weren't notified by call that we were going to marry and "just got a card". Excuse me? We designed that card by hand and my fiancee even hand-edited the font, creating new letters even to suit out needs. In our view, it is cooler and shows more effort and celebration to do a nice RSVP wedding card, than to give a sloppy call? Are these retirees out of their mind?
Their reasoning was that they needed time to prepare. For what though? We don't ask anything of you except to show up if you want to? You don't even need to contribute anything materially or financially. They act like almost 2 months prior is too short of a notice. "We didn't know this would happen" my brother in Christ, you know I proposed last September and people asked when it's gonna happen next year, and now you're surprised it happens the very next year as is common? I even said that and all I got back was "Well some people are engaged for years!" What am I supposed to take away from that? That you all didn't think it would actually happen? That this is somehow more serious than you anticipated?
It reminds me of how we were visiting them last year after our engagement and had to leave early because I got sick, and in the end they were like "Sad that we didn't get to talk about your engagement." meanwhile we were there for hours and almost all they wanted to talk about was what some other clown in the family is doing. You had the time and opportunity!
It's also crazy that they prefer to talk to each other than us about it! Why are you calling each other complaining that you don't know this or that, but never ask us? Or if we tell you, just choose to not listen to us? I swear we can tell these people 5 times that it will be a very small group of 20 people, us included, and they just forget it. They project their own ideas on how grand and big and extra a wedding should be onto us and then pretend they are overwhelmed and helpless trying to help us by... doing nothing? Complaining to each other? They are acting completely stressed out as if they're trying to save us from a horrible event when that is exactly what we want?
Dude you are guests, of course you are in the dark about some of the planning. Have you ever been invited to someone's wedding and knew and cared beforehand about shit like where the cake is coming from? No! Why can't you mind your own business? I thought this celebration was for us, not what you want to get out of attending a wedding. But now it's even used as a competition between divorced parents, because both sides are scared the other side is gonna do more for the wedding and they'll be labelled the bad parent, so they wanna desperately know what parent does what and if they measure up. I don't want to participate in your stupid competition! Grow up!
If I could do it all over again, we'd not invite family. Just hang with some of my fiancee's friends. Tell family after it already happened. Nuts. And my family wasn't even invited or in any way involved; it would have been even more nuts if they were.