Planning a Wedding is Like Removing a Barbed Hook From Your Finger

Well by seeing the title you’ve obviously discovered that I have had a little trouble with my wedding.  In the back of my mind I figure I should be just sitting back listening to my fiancé talk about what she wants and nodding in agreement.  Well this is clearly not the case since I refer to this planning period as removing a barbed hook from my finger.  It turns out I am like Belgium, neutral to all parties, but trying to be overrun by one or the other. 

Image via Wikipedia

Well, not exactly like Belgium, I guess, because I am not allowing them to run all over me.  When I announced to the proud parents of my fiancé that we pushed the wedding date forward, we were having breakfast before church.  They were thrilled and in that space behind my eyes that I like to call my brain, I had a green flag waving from the emotional perspective that was so much larger than the red one risen by the logical sector of my brain.  After the service, the green flag was fading away enough to allow me to see the red flag behind.  But it was too late.  All of a sudden I am rushed with all of these questions from people I hardly know, many four times my age that I had no clue as to who they were.  That little waving red flag, the logic, was just there telling me that since I didn’t want a large wedding anyway, why tell the parents at church for them to go around and let everyone know to come to my wedding.  So you’ve seen the movie The Perfect Storm right? 

Image via Wikipedia

Though it is not good enough to quote on words, a specific scene comes to mind and is good enough for people to remember.  You know when that boat is on that monstrous wave vertically, ready to tip backwards.  Yep that was where I was at that time, figuratively of course, though the outcome may have come out better if it had been literal.  We go back to their house after the service and I’m talking to her father outside and he asks me about the wedding plans.  You know the usual.  How many people and so on.  I tell him the plans I had in mind and he liked them.  We decide to head inside and as soon as we walk in we here them coming up with a total figure of people who will be there.  Then the bomb was dropped.  Five hundred people, that’s just off the top of their heads.  Well to drop that number out of their heads I tell them that there is no where around here to hold that many people.

Image via Wikipedia

It still didn’t dissuade them.  The church we were just sitting in won’t hold that many but the parents are insisting that the wedding be held there so they don’t have to rent out another church.  I told them that if they wanted that many people they can pay for it not me.  But regardless they still want to cram that many people into a church that only hold about 150.  This is where the title of the article comes in.  At that moment I had that barbed hook in my hand, the five hundred people statement did it.  I had two choices.  I could cut it out, in this since meaning let them go on with it and not worry about it until it blew up.  Or I could just push it on through and tell them how it was going to be.  Needless to say there’s not going to be a wedding with 500 people anymore.  After them holding that they were paying for it over my head I told them where they could stick their money and we had a nice little ceremony at the court house and hit the door running with a certain finger in the air to all of you who invited yourselves to my wedding.