If you like Bridgerton and haven't finished watching the most recent season, this is your early spoiler alert, but also, come on, it's been out for a couple of weeks now. Even I've watched it, possibly more than once, and I have a baby to look after...
Where did we leave off? Oh yeah, bemoaning invites.
So, another thing - RSVP dates. They're a nightmare. Because when do you set them for? If you set them too early, so many people are going to forget what they ordered for the food, if you set them too late you end up with the manic job of chasing people for their food options before needing to get them to your venue or caterer six or eight or however many weeks before, and yes, I know that a good option to combat that is have a buffet, but I don't like buffets for one thing, and never really have, partly because I despise sandwich platters, and even if that wasn't a thing, COVID made me nervous about the whole shared food experience. Given that there are issues around another illness now, which I'm thanking my lucky stars my son has had his jabs for (though only just), I don't really like the idea of a large display of food and everyone helping themselves.
Slight tangent - sandwich platters. Most sandwich platters that I have ever seen come with each sandwich sandwiched in next to another sandwich and it's literally impossible to not touch the next one when helping yourself to one. There's also this strange thing of not flavour blocking - keeping everything of one type together - and instead it's like coronation chicken next to egg mayo or something else and in order to not look mean on the fillings, the fillings are oozing out of the sides and it's kind of gross. Not everyone loves eggs, not everyone loves mayo, not everyone eats chicken, but it can't just be a 'tism thing that when there is something disgusting touching the rest of the food you now can't eat it?? Although I'm vegetarian, I'm not unreasonable - or at least I don't think so - but there is a big issue of things from one food contaminating another, particularly because it's been twenty years this year since I knowingly and intentionally ate meat, so trust me, it could make me feel pretty ill if I accidentally ingest it because my body is just not used to it. I know you can get vegetarian only platters but most people or places won't because they still think there aren't that many of us, and also, it is then a 'tism-y thing to think that a lot of the flavours on it are gross because they add marmite or pickle or falafel or something far too spicy because "otherwise veggie food has no flavour"... seriously, bore off with that.
Anyway, weddings...
We set a really early RSVP date, partly because my partner said do whatever you like and partly because I want to get this thing planned and then draw a line under it because it's done and I don't have to think about it (such a happy bride, she is) but thankfully that also means if members of the family are busy (or don't want to come - not judging, don't really care) we can invite friends in their place that we had to scoot off the list because we didn't have the numbers. Great right? Except now you're having to send an invite where the RSVP date has gone and they know they were second choice (way to make your friends feel loved) or you have to do another print run of invites and let's face it, they're not that cheap! Also, how many damn times are we going to do that? What RSVP date do we update it to? This is why I made calls and texts to people we were inviting not long after we booked the venue because if they said, sorry, busy that day, I'm not sending them an invite, awaiting a response, chasing them for a response and then thinking, crap, what do I do now? Yes, okay, we're going to have to do the food thing separately, but that's fine.
Hilariously, music has also been a bit difficult.
I love music, my partner loves music, and a lot of what we love overlaps, so you'd think good right? Wrong.
Weddings are an eclectic bunch of people and there is nothing worse than the idea of putting on some random music that a couple loves and everyone else has no idea what it is and therefore no inclination to dance to it. On the flip side, the idea of having "party songs" and general cheese all night makes me feel nauseous. Look, I like what I like and I would have been perfectly happy plugging an iPod in on shuffle, or with a playlist, but I was advised against it (no, I wasn't, I was told no). You can kind of have free reign on a first dance song, but I didn't want to do the same thing everyone else does which is normally one of about ten or fifteen songs, at least five of which are by Ed Sheeran (what did people do their first dance to before Ed Sheeran?) and some songs are just a bit overplayed for weddings. And one of those is what my partner wants to play, and unfortunately it's one of the only bits of the wedding he has particularly strong opinions on, so I kind of have to give him that one and try and not have a sour face on for it. But I want to have a sour face on, because much as I don't hate the song, it feels generic and overdone and so just not me. I argued for another song, but basically no one else coming to the wedding would know it. I don't care about these things, but sadly, he does.
If I had my way then the entire reception would probably be the back catalog of The Summer Set, even though some of those songs are not really wedding songs (most of them aren't) and some of them swear quite a bit and there will be a few kids around, including mine, so we've had to agree on a certain kind of cheese (or what our DJ calls cheese anyway) though I have explicitly told him that I'm banning karaoke.
I think this is going to become a longer running series which only ends when you find out if my fiancé and I actually make it past the wedding, given that I'm being such a grump about so much of it...
No comments:
Post a Comment