My Wedding MemoriesI sent my wedding invitation western style several weeks ago. This is the policy I followed: If a guest was married, engaged or living with someone, I invited the couple. If the guest was single but had dated someone for a long time, I invited both. About one-quarter of my guest list was made up of single, unattached adults who received invitations for themselves alone. I consulted several etiquette books, and not one said I was required to provide "and guest" invitations for singles. I've been planning this wedding for more than a year, and my friends seemed enthusiastic about attending. Yesterday, however, I received "regrets" from three women who had previously accepted. "Alice" had only recently started seeing someone. "Betty" had just ended a relationship, and "Carla" is married, but a close friend of both Alice and Betty. I can only surmise that Alice was offended because she couldn't bring a date, and decided not to come--so Betty and Carla declined also.
If they had a problem with the wedding invitation western style, they should have spoken to me. I feel they have ended their relationships with me. Am I overreacting? I don't think so. Evidently Betty and Carla feel closer to Alice than they do to you. Be happy that you didn't invest more time and energy in cultivating these three insensitive women. A friend you can't count on is no friend at all. Celebrate without them. The bride's younger sister, Claire, and I had given each other little pep talks about how we would not cry at the wedding. I am not sure why it is so hard to hold back. It's an old saying, but true: We really were not losing McNair, we were gaining a wonderful new son and brother. So why should we be so torn up? I can't answer that, but when I saw Claire and McNair come down the aisle, something swelled up inside me that I have never felt before. A mixture of pride, wonder, joy and an almost uncontrollable urge to stop the music, race out of the church, climb that big Clock Tower in the Sky and turn back the hands. This was my first turn at being mother of the bride, and I was not prepared for the overlay of emotions: McNair at 3, with a little fountain of hair (brushed up and tied with a ribbon on top of her head) McNair at her sixth birthday party when everyone came dressed up in their mother's clothes, high heels clomping across the room, lipstick and rouge making them look like angels and other ladies of the night; McNair at 14, sitting in a chair with Claire who'd made her promise to hold her hand and say the Lord's Prayer while Claire called Frederick Brown to ask him to the eighth-grade dance; McNair at the church conference center the summer she met Bruce, trying to point him out to me without him knowing we were looking. |