Monday, April 21, 2008

How to be nice (and get squashed)

When we consented to celebrate our "real" wedding in my family-in-law's hometown, we thought of being courteous to the whole (big !) family by making it possible for everyone of this (huge) tribe to be present for the big day. We started making a list of friends to be brought over from a distance, we have after all 500 kms to go from Paris and we found out that we have to make a big sacrifice: we can not just invite any friends we want.

And then comes the big day when my parents-in-law gave us their lists and the first shock came in. 4 guests out of 5 are unknown to me, not even by name. They found it normal and I just thought, well... this is their first child's wedding so it is kind of difficult not to get over excited about inviting their good friends and neighbours. We made a deal that those perfect strangers will stay there for the cocktail party but we would have (only) close families for dinner. At this point, I was still motivated to be a miss perfect little daughter-in-law.

We started sending our invitations two weeks ago. From my side, I will have just a couple of friends and 3 members of my family. From my husband's side a few friends, and from my parents-in-law side we have a long list of ... strangers. I thought that it was all done and hell with it, at least until my new mother-in-law called to ask us for the left-over invitations because she wanted to invite (ONLY) 1 additional couple, whose name we have never heard of and still do not know, to our wedding dinner. We had a quarrel over the phone. I was beginning to feel that my wedding is turning to be a hey-go-here-to-party or worse, a big circus and me the weirdo creature everyone (that I do not know of) is coming to see. Okay, well, my imagination might run ahead too far but I was beginning to get upset. I was accused of being paranoiac and after convincing myself so hard that I can still make it to be the miss perfect little daughter-in-law, I sent 3 additional invitations for dinner to my mother-in-law. She insisted that she needed only 1 but I wanted to see if I was really going paranoiac.

Result came in yesterday. My mother-in-law invited more people for dinner without even asking us. Now, who is paranoiac? This time I am feeling that "my" wedding, which now turns out to be my mother-in-law's reunion party, is really getting out of my hand. She swore that she would not invite more but I would not count on it. One thing for sure, the next time she announces it, my game of miss perfect little daughter-in-law is finished and I would take it as a challenge for duel.

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