Good morning! Good morning!

I just woke up about a half an hour ago and I need to leave in exactly 5 minutes to go to my "Group Power" exercise class with Gwen, which I love, but I need to vent before dashing out the door. So why not do it carelessly in under five minutes (and without editing) on a public webpage for all to see and judge?

I began my morning as I begin all mornings, by brewing my coffee (on one of our fave engagement gifts - the Cuisinart Grind-n-Brew - sheer genius! - well, except when Mr F sets it to grind coffee at 5 am before he goes to work and I shoot out of bed thinking it's Armageddon). After that, I sat down at my computer, just to quickly check if I got any emails I deemed fun and worth opening (essentially anything from friends, and not one of the stress-inducing emails from theknot.com which tells me I have 93 overdue items and 40 more coming up in the next month).

That's when I see that Future Mother in Law (FMIL) has emailed me. This is not extraordinary. FMIL emails me probably four times a week. In all honesty, I really don't mind, except for the fact that Mr F needs to realize how angelic and saintly I am for patiently responding to each of said emails (while my own mother's emails, also on the four-a-week rotation, languish away in my inbox, their winking smiley faces just waiting for a smile back, without even a red flag reminder to provide at least a glimmer of hope that they will receive a response).

I open the email to see these simple words: "Please add on Mr. X and Guest to the wedding list and also Mrs. Y and Guest. Thanks."

This is problematic for two reasons. Number #1, I don't want to add anyone else onto the guest list and definitely not in such a willy-nilly fashion; this should not be as if you're picking out a box of cereal at the grocery store, see a "buy two get two free" sign, and decide "aw heck, I'll get four boxes of cereal!". If four people are added on to the wedding that is not supposed to exceed 125 (acknowledged that I'm delusional on this point), then it should be a request and a carefully considered one at that.

Reason #2, is...sweet folger's house, what on earth is this "And Guest?" AND GUEST? I'm having heart palpitations. This is not the best part of waking up. This is like opening up Pandora's Swarovski-crystal bejeweled wedding box, and letting Decorum, Budget, and Sanity escape with a bottle of Grey Goose to run off to Ibiza to cause all kinds of chaos, never to return to my wedding experience.

Now I'm not an anti-guest person. Here is my stance. I believe if you are in a serious relationship (as defined by you) that you get to bring a date. I also think that if you're part of a group of people and you are the only one without a significant other there, then I might tell you that you should feel free to bring a guest (because I don't want anyone feeling badly). I know those rules involve a lot of gray area, but screw it - it's my party and I can make barely comprehensible rules if I want to. And in all reality, the reason behind my (sketchy) rules is that we are on a very tight budget and very much want to try to keep our guest list to a minimum to keep it an intimate affair (see reference to delusions above).

By inviting everyone with a guest (or anyone with a "guest" as opposed to "significant other," which means everyone has to be invited with a guest), we could take an invite list from 130 to 150 easy (all of which are presumably people I will never have met in my life...and in case you don't remember my ramblings from about a month ago, I'm not particularly keen on strangers seeing me profess my love and appear my most vulnerable on my wedding day). And ok, to tell you the truth, for the most part, the people who would be coming alone are people I don't give a crap about coming (i.e., second cousins and/or children of friends of In-Laws). So if being invited without a guest means that they won't come - so be it. (See, I can be selfish. I just hate to admit it.)

So I dashed off an email to Mr F, telling him he had to lay down the law with his mom about our "No Guests" policy and while I was at it, I told him to tell her that no kids (excepting our nephew) were invited either. Might as well throw in the kitchen sink.