wedding wedding wedding

Thanks to the genius of wedding websites--- which I apparently signed up for when I registered for a honeymoon giveaway, which no one ever wins and only gets me in with wedding junk mail... I've been reminded that the wedding is 5 months, 1 week, and 2 days away. And that I have 6 overdue tasks. I get two of these emails, from two different sites, weekly. It annoys me! At the same time, I kind of like that someone's counting down (so I don't have to).

I'm in the time period where I actually have to make my decisions now. sigh. Once you make a choice, then there's no room left to daydream. I don't buy wedding magazines anymore because I have a dress, and 95% of them are full of pictures of dresses. Actually, I never bought that many of them to begin with, cause I felt gyped that there weren't as many articles as I wanted. I don't care about stupid dresses--- you end up buying from the store you go to anyways, without regards to whatever 8,000 pictures you bring with you. I need advice on color schemes, cheap flowers, honeymoon ideas for poor grad students, etc. Grrr.

Anyways, I have to order the invitations. And I'm really annoyed about it. I have no 'list' from the MoG. She's having a party for us here, in Sept, which is wonderful and I greatly appreciate. But she has decided that she doesn't want to send wedding invitations to the people down here that she 'knows' won't be going to the wedding, and just give them reception cards for the sept. party. That means that the only people invited to the wedding, from J's side, is the bridal party. I finally got him to realize that his mom has decided to NOT invite anyone to his wedding, based on whether or not they are coming.

Here's the best logic: She doesn't want to send a ceremony invite (which will be out of state) to people she knows won't go. She does want to invite them to a reception in Sept. So I said that the invite isn't just an invite, but an announcement. So the right thing to do is send the invite, and then send an additional reception card, later, separately, that reads "no gifts please". She doesn't want to send the ceremony invite because she doesn't want to seem like we are asking for gifts from people we know won't go anyways. Following this logic, she has decided to send only a reception notice to 'her list' and say nothing of no gifts, because she wants us to have gifts. .... Isn't there a hypocrisy here?

If we send a notice, my way, we are saying that these people are invited to the wedding, regardless of where it is. If they choose to honor us with a gift, great, but there should be a line on the second reception card reading 'no gifts' because if someone wants to get a gift, they'll do whatever they want anyways. I don't care about the gifts. I don't like that we are now having 'my wedding' and 'his wedding', or atleast I'm starting to feel that way---- this second reception thing--- which I'm sure is not as big a deal as I think it is--- feels a bit of a repeat. She wants me to wear my dress again (no.).

Here's what I think is the underlying reason for the above issues: the invitations thing is based on the fact that I need names and addresses 6 months ago, and she doesn't have/hasn't made the time to compile a guest list. And the dress thing-- she wants to wear her dress, so if I wear mine, she can wear hers. I'm fine with these reasons, if they were just out in the open!

J is going to talk with his mom about the list, and I will not wear the dress-- she won't argue when I politely decline. J's mom is a great lady, and I really appreciate her. I just know that this is her only son, only wedding, and I don't want her to go off the deep end on making 'her reception'.

And I really, really, want my friends there so that I don't feel too far down the rabbit hole with strangers. I know J might have the same feelings about the ceremony, but at least he knows 50% of the guests already(friends in common and my family)!

Last note: I'm a dork. I bought a monogram embosser. It cost 28 $ and I'm going to use it to emboss our initials onto napkins, so I can just buy bulk colored napkins. And I can use it for programs, envelopes, etc. But mostly, I bought it for the napkins. How silly.