450!

I know, enough about the dress already! So, next topic. The other day, after a 3-month hiatus, we hammered out the guest list with FFIL. We had started back in the summer and back then I was so pissed! I knew that he would want to invite this insufferable woman from church, who is all talk and fake show. And if she's not invited, there would be terrible consequences for that side of the family b/c the church has nothing better to do than to backstab, choose favorites, and gossip. The worst part about inviting this attention-whore is that I've heard that she won't give a gift. Not only is that rude (how could you even think to show up empty-handed to a party?!), but I think that's just class-less. So we would basically be buying her a fancy 10-course dinner, because a young couple can afford to throw thousands of dollars around. Anyway, this time around I was more mellow (I'm sticking ppl like her on the last table, in the corner and I'd give them a different menu if I could) though it drove me bonkers to sit there while FFIL rattled off a Chinese name of some distant 'relative' and then fiance would try to phonetically type it into his spreadsheet. It didn't help that some of these names were already in the spreadsheet so we had to decipher things like 'Koo' which FFIL didn't understand b/c it was said with the wrong tone. To make it extra difficult, fiance doesn't know these ppl b/c they are 'related' in such ways as "we have the same name," "we're from the same village," (not to be confused with "we're from the same province"), and my personal favorite, "she is the daughter of the son-in-law of your grandmother's cousin." In the end, it was decided to purge these mysteriously related folks and have FFIL input them on his own using Chinese Word, since we really don't need to know who these ppl are. (They'll show up with 3 extra uninvited family members, give a $20 gift, and wear white tube socks.) Aside from this hodgepodge of 'relatives' FFIL also wants to invite all his workers, all the members of every committee in church (regardless of whether or not he likes or respects them), and even someone known as Dragonlady b/c she invited them for her daughters' wedding, yet he may not invite someone who is on a current committee if they are not invited for his daughter's wedding in May. At least there was someone whose name sounded like a Chinese curse (the '8th grandma' one), which kept me amused and giggling on the sly. All told, with fiance's huge amount of relatives (both true and who knows what), plus my family (crazies and all), and our friends, the number stands at 450. I think there will be more ppl there that I don't know than ppl that I do know, and I think friends and ppl that I actually want there will be a minority. Hmmm... sounds like it's a party for FFIL, doesn't it? My hope is that for our 10 year anniversary we'll actually do something that we want (and maybe that will mean an extended vacation far far away, the destination wedding that I've always wanted). I'm also hoping that all 450 ppl won't show up, though the idea of sending out all those invites is still daunting. But I'm pretty sure that there will be 2 versions of invites, one strictly in Chinese (probably of the cheap, mass-produced, Raid-smelling kind), and the handcrafted one.