Addressing ettiquette and wedding stress

[andrewducker]

I'm sending out wedding invites at the moment, which is making me aware of all sorts of in-built biases in the conventions surrounding how we address people. I'm skipping over a lot of it by using first names for everyone, but even then there's a question of order. For older people I'm largely going with Male Partner, Female Partner, Children in order of age, but reversing the male/female order when the email address is for the woman of the house. For people nearer my own age I'm going with "Partner I know best->Partner I know less well, Children in order of age". Lesbians go in the order that I'm used to people putting them.

The whole invitation thing has been more stressful than I thought, largely because the venue has space for 80, and it turns out that Julie and I have 57 family members between us, so there are only 23 spaces for friends. This means that we've had to cut some cousins I haven't seen in 20 years, and restrict a few people to not having +1s if we're going to fit in even the people that we see/chat to on a regular basis, and a couple of really old friends. And the reception can take 30 more, but that still left us with 57 people that we don't have space for. I just hope people understand.

Comments

[susiemutha.livejournal.com]

This may sound really cheesy...but, invite those who are closer to your heart...friends, family, whatever...that's all that matters. After the fact, send everyone else an e-mail with a video of the wonderful event attached.

It is sad that there has to be a set limit though. My brother's wedding was that way because it was at a place specially made for weddings and his wife and her family were all about proper etiquette. All the other weddings I have attended were wide open venues...my favorite was in a park where there was room for hundreds of people, no seating arrangement, etc.

Whatever the case..it will be you and Julie's special day..enjoy, be happy, and make a wonderful life together!