Achtung Baby

I should have known. I was feeling smug. And sure, I have posts and posts and posts...and posts about ridiculous wedding debacles, but I had escaped one quagmire which I knew plenty of my friends and fellow brides were forced to grapple with. Wee lil invitees. (Also known as children.)

Now there's a good chance Mr. F is going to read this post. And there's also a good chance he's going to get pissed off. But shit, since I can't please anyone anymore, might as well please no one. I'll try to do a bunch of rapid fire posts after this one and maybe it will get pushed down to the bottom and he won't see it. But I need to vent (er, I mean share important insights), and I'll be damned if a silly thing like the sanctity of my relationship will get in the way.

I have no younger generation in my family yet. None of my cousins have offspring (which does double duty in that it also holds off questions such as "Did you see how cute Amy's baby is? Don't you want kids of your own? Are you going to start 'trying' right away?"...and note to self: do whole post later on that last statement, which in itself is enough to make the too-big dinner I ate shift uncomfortably in my stomach...just the word "trying"...ew). While a few of my friends do have children, I don't really feel obligated to invite them. Not sure why, maybe because there are only a few, but I don't.

Mr. F's side of the family is for the most part the same. "For the most part" being the important part of that sentence. In fact, Mr F's brother has a kid. Who is two. And the CUTEST FRICKIN KID EVER. Adorable. I love him. And there's a little of me that wonders if I would have said "yes" to Mr. F's proposal if maybe just maybe cutiepie wasn't his nephew. This kid is cute. So here are my thoughts on cutiepie nephew being at the wedding.

I want him to be at the ceremony. The ceremony itself is the important part of this event - it is the marriage of his Uncle and his Aunt and I hope, just maybe he might remember that one day. However, I don't think he needs to be at the reception. I just don't. Sue me. (But first, hear me out.) The reception is not the "wedding." The "wedding" (a verb, the actual act of entering into wedlock), occurs at the ceremony. The "reception" that follows is entirely an adult affair which includes a section called the "cocktail hour". My thinking: if you are at the point in your life where going to the bathroom involves never even having to go anywhere near a toilet, you probably should not be attending an event that has the word "cocktail" in the title. Moreover, this is an event that will be in the evening. If you are two, and Dr. Spock (or whoever is doling out baby advice these days) suggests that you be in jammies and all tucked in by 7:00 pm, you probably shouldn't be dancing the night away. You should be asleep. Not running around tugging on the skirts of adults and spilling cheerios on the specially-ordered linens. It just changes the feel of the event. Which blows. Because I wanted an adult party. Not fucking Sesame Street. At this point, why don't I just trade in the white gown for some yellow feathers and a beak and call it a day? (Can you see where I lose it there? Making good points, following up my statements with supporting facts, and then just - bam - all downhill making obnoxious remarks and being mean about Big Bird. Who I love. And by the way, who I just discovered like a year ago - actually fabricated Snuffulupagus - did you know that? I didn't. I had no idea - I didn't know he was an imaginary friend! I thought he was just another character. I wasn't the brightest kid. Or adolescent. Or...adult.)

Meh.

And it sounds like I'm taking this out on cutiepie, but I"m not. I think there might be something else behind my frustration, but it goes back to Baskin-Robbins and I've bashed her so much already that I can't decide if I should tell-all on this one. So I'm going to sleep on it. Which is a bit of a risk because it means that Mr. F. might read this and get mad before I get a chance to post more and hide this post. (As you might guess, Mr. F strongly disagrees about whether cutiepie nephew should be invited. I think he's just thinking how much he loves cutiepie and not about the realities of the actual event. And I can't even say this without Mr. F thinking I'm blaspheming his little guy. *sigh*)