I’m not a planner

If I were to recount to all of you out there… yes, all 5 of you… how I planned my wedding, wedding coordinators all over the world would send me an email, asking for an interview, and a full page of their brochure would be dedicated to me. They’d use me as their “How Not To Plan A Wedding” example. I would be a household name for all brides-to-be. (Brides Mother: “What do you mean you still haven’t contacted the caterer?” Bride-To-Be (whining): “But I’ve got too much to do! It can wait.” Bride’s Mother: “Do you remember the story of… KALA???!!!” Bride (shuddering, collapsing in tears) “Ok! OKAY! I’ll do it! Hand me the phone! And stop mentioning that name… I don’t want you jinxing my wedding!”)

I’ve become more responsible now, though. When I go to go the grocery store, I linger by the vegetable section and actually end up buying one or two of the critters (it’s called “Balanced Diet”). When out in pubs, I make it a point to order Vodka Orange from time to time… you know, for Vitamin C. And I can now staple fix my curtains to its proper length using a needle and thread something really sharp. My mother would hardly recognise me. My, what a woman I’ve turned out to be!

But before… whew! I was a wreck. Now, I’m not going to disclose the full details of how exactly the wedding of the century was planned because I want people to respect me, dammit.

But the past has come back to haunt me. Today I was looking for a document on my computer and came across my wedding party invitation photo. My mother, frustrated that I hadn’t arranged any family get-together after the ceremony, went ahead and booked a restaurant for family members only (Thanks Mommy!), probably to avoid being the gossip of all future family gatherings.

What Julien and I managed to book, though, was a party for our friends. We had envisioned everything: free flowing beer, oily chicken wings, great music, the works.

I, however, had failed to envision getting the word out to our friends. I was at work a few days before the wedding, taking a smoke break, when my officemate asked me if we were going to throw a wedding party, Julien and I. I assured her that of course I was going to “send out invitations”. Then I excused myself, ran back to my desk, opened my email account, cc’d everyone on my address book, and typed out the address of the bar, the time, the date, etcetera. After writing the email I thought it would be nice to attach a photo of the couple, to personalize it a bit. But I had only one photo of Julien and myself on my computer. After biting my lip and debating with the devil on my left shoulder and the angel on my right, I thought “Fuck it, I’m not spending too much time on this, it’s boring”, attached the photo and hit Send.

So, in short, our wedding party invitation was sent via email, along with this photo:

But hey – the chicken wings were really good!