part one: the wedding.

Question: is it possible to remain sane when arranging a wedding?

i know, i know. that could easily be viewed as the dumbest question to appear on this here blog. i'm gonna ask it anyway. can you really hang onto your sanity when the fabric on the back of a shoe is the sort of topic that gets a good hour and half air time? I mean really...what was i thinking? did i really expect that ben and i would sneak down to the mornington pennisula, scurry up to a man who looked somewhat like a priest, nod 'i do' kiss happily and then race each other to the bar? I must have had my head in a bonbonaire magazine for the last 3 months!

as the days towards our special day fly by like a rickety italian train loaded with hairy backpackers and even hairier locals, i am starting to feel my quiet calm slipping away. on saturday i ventured over to mums house armed with invites that were harder to extract from ben that oil is from the americans. today was a dedicated 'wedding day' when invites were written out, dresses were reexamined, invite lists were finalised. it started off well, all 'those would be gorgeous flowers' and 'i think you're mad not to wear your grandmothers pearls' when i dropped a question that could sink a thousand ships with the weight of it's response.

'ok mum' i asked, 'who would you like to ask to our wedding'.

she stopped for a moment, put down the blue satin ribbon and starred at me. i don't think she quiet believed i'd asked her. her eyes flicked for a moment, registering each word and then glazed over as her mind worked to piece together her response.

*mum is irish, please imagine irish accent*

'well now, i have to say that i would definitely, no doubt about it, have to invite blah and blah because they have always been so good to me and your father. oh and mrs. whats-her-face from god-knows-where because remember the time she did that thing with the thing? well i just have to invite her! and listen, i'm not being greedy, but i MUST bring ba ba ba and la la la because when their son's dog got married to the next door neighbours fence we were invited'.

this colourful, delightful mix of names went on for some time, as my stomach got weaker and weaker. where had my small 70 group of family and friends gone? where had our 'everyone there MUST know the both of us and our relationship well' rule gone? where had our 'ideal wedding' vision gone?

Apparently they high tailed it with my sanity in a car that traveled down some dusty road, ran out of gas, sputtered, chugged, and back fired so fiercely it sounded like a drunk man farting. *sigh*