Bridezilla returns

I'm an incredibly calm bride. And before you go telling me it's because it's my second wedding - shut it! A bride to be I work with reckons I'm only calm because my wedding isn't legal. I gave her the filthiest look and explained that we're still in the limelight, still catering for many people, still organising all the stuff the legal wedding requires. Oh, and there's the fact that some people find it weird, which could even make it more stressful. I also explained that this is my second wedding and my first WAS legal and I wasn't Bridezilla then. So that shut her up. Biatch!

Anyway, I digress.

I've had one Bridezilla moment. Unless you count the underpants tantrum which will be blogged about in the next couple of days. I'm digressing again... I've had one real Bridezilla moment, and that was on Friday. The invitations had arrived in the one hour I was out of the house, and the courier left a voucher saying we had to rearrange delivery. I wanted them on Friday, dammit. So I rung the company, got nowhere, rang again, got nowhere, rang a third time and told the guy I wasn't impressed that it was my parcel and I made up some reason for needing it (a lie). The guy said that the truck had to return to the depot and I could have the parcel on Monday. Monday?! Three whole days away?!

C suggested we stalk the parcel at the depot, so I texted a friend who used to work for the courier company for advice and he told us to just go there. So we arrived, planning to sit there for an hour if we had to wait for the truck to return. But we got the parcel immediately. Took it home, opened it and Bridezilla was calm. Hopefully not to return again.

So now we have the invitations ready to go. We wrote our guest list out again. Local people on one page, non-local people on the other. And we decided to personally deliver a few of the local ones - to people we knew would be home. The feedback was so positive!

The rest are going in the mail. They're about a month early, assuming we send them out this week. We figure that's okay, given the time of year (just before Christmas) and the fact that every guest needs to travel if they're coming.

It was really hard for me deciding the invitation list.

I've mentioned before the changes in some of my friendships this year. I was really torn between whether to invite some people or not. Friends who haven't really been supportive of my relationship. They haven't even supported me over the past 18 months or so when I was going through a major crisis with that friend that I had to cut all ties with. I don't want to offend them by not inviting them, but I also don't see the point in having people there who couldn't honestly say "I'm happy for them". I asked C to decide, but she refused, and told me I had to make this decision on my own... she listened to me outline pros and cons, she listened to me come to a decision, and change it many times, but she's trying very hard to avoid telling me whether she feels they should be invited or not.

We're having a small wedding, but the numbers aren't small. We both have big families and we have friends we want there. By small I guess we mean intimate. Our ceremony is incredibly personal, our song choices, our speeches. Everything we're doing is about us. I don't want anyone there who is likely to roll their eyes at any of this.

I do have a couple of family members I'm worried about, but they've chosen to come and I actually think they'll come out of this with a greater understanding about what a same-sex relationship is all about. They'll understand that we're IN LOVE, not just FRIENDS. They'll understand that our whole relationship isn't simply friendship with sex thrown in. They'll understand that we are a union, partners in every sense of the word. Maybe I'm hoping for too much, but I expect this through our day.

But... in terms of these friends... I don't want to end friendships through not inviting them. I'm ready to defend my decision, and explain my reasons, but unfortunately I don't even think it'll come down to that. I think it'll come down to the fact that they see it as a rejection, and end the friendship completely. The potential threat of that makes me wonder if I should just invite them... but then I think that I'd be more concerned about what I do and say in front of them. I don't want to feel censored on our day. I want to be completely there, with C, with our family and friends.

I'm really struggling. I'm not sure if I'll completely make up my mind til the deadline for sending invitations out in terms of etiquette passes.