I think we really hit a turning point this month. We realized that the wedding is coming like a freight train, so we re-organized and re-focused. Everything seems to be on track. Both moms have now found their dresses and they are both STUNNING. The invitations are all printed, stuffed and ready to go thanks to my wonderful girlfriends who attended the invitation stuffing party. The favors have arrived and are ready to be “prepared”. Keith and I spent Valentine’s Day picking out our wedding rings and had a wonderful dinner to celebrate. We started talking about plans past the wedding and real life issues. That is when our future together began to crystallize for me.

   The RSVPs are rolling in. There's no turning back now! Not that we would of course, but the whole thing is becoming more and more real. The entire invitation experience has been very difficult, starting with creating the guest list. The one thing that Keith and I have always wanted for our wedding was to be able to invite everyone that means something to us. We don't really have large families, but we have an extremely large and diverse group of friends. And since we work together, we have a large group of friends in common at work.

   We started with a giant list of people, trying to think of everyone that we knew. Then we prioritized with A, B and C (just like all the books tell you to do). We then spent some grueling hours together going through the A and B lists with a fine toothcomb. The A list was eventually whittled down to about 175 people which we decided was completely manageable. But when we started talking about work friends, we realized that we either had to cut large groups, or add large groups and that is when the B list shrunk and the A list grew. We always figured that we would invite all the A people, and if the RSVPs came back as less than 175 than we would invite some people on the B list.

   We shared the list with our families and gave them a number of 60 each. That meant that our parents' lists (including their friends and family) would total 120, which would leave us about 80 people to invite. Notice here that the list grew instantly from 175 to 200. Both families went slightly over the 60 limit, and we went over the 80 limit, bringing the A list to a grand total of 230 people. That is when I made the BIG mistake … I sent the save-the-date message to that entire list of people, instead of just very close family and friends. Four months later, the list grew by 16 more people and the grand total of people who received invitations to the wedding was 246 (including Keith and myself, but NOT including the vendors that I will have to seat and feed.)

   Most of the invitation envelopes were printed and stuffed the night of the invitation stuffing party that I hosted. Unfortunately, we couldn't get them all done that night. So, one Sunday night at the beginning of March, Keith and I stayed up all night to finish printing the envelopes and stuffing them. As 2am rolled around, I realized that I had run out of outside envelopes. Panic set in. That is when I realized that our guest list had really gotten out of control. We had only ordered 150 invitations! We figured that we would never invite more than 200 people and that most of those people would be couples. OOPS! So, one or two people, who shall remain nameless, who we thought wouldn't be able to tell the difference, and who we hope aren't reading this article, didn't get one. We printed their addresses on the inside envelopes and used double-sided tape to keep it closed. So TACKY! That is when we sadly ripped up the B list.

   Needless to say, I anxiously run in the door every night to retrieve my beautiful little envelopes and update my spreadsheet with RSVPs. As of today as I write this article, I have 75 yes'es and 3 no's. Do we want anyone to say they can't come? No, of course not. Does it break my heart every time a friend asks me if they can bring their new boyfriend or girlfriend to the wedding and I have to say no? Yes. Am I getting more and more worried that I will have to have a couple of tables outside the big white tent in the grapevines? YES! They will still be able to hear the music and come in to dance, right? Of course we will only be able to have a dance floor big enough for 6 people to fit because of all the tables we will need, but we can take turns dancing. Plus, Keith and I will be so busy spending our entire evening hitting each of those tables to greet our guests that by the time the 5 hours of the reception are over we will only have had the time to do our first dance anyway.

   I am joking, of course, but the gravity of the situation is overwhelming. Everyone keeps insisting that I will be surprised at how many people will have something unexpected come up and won't be able to go. I was in a wedding this past weekend (Stephanie Walkup and Matt Sullivan - good friends from college) and they had invited about 230 people and only 170 people came. Granted they both come from divorced families, which complicated things, and they DID NOT send out any type of save-the-date message.

   I'm sure next month's article will be about the seating chart … my next nightmare!

   As always we will make the best. That's the thing that Keith and I love most about each other… the glass is always half full! We are blessed that we have such a close family and so many good friends to share our day with us. And when May 19th arrives we will be so wrapped up in gazing into each other's eyes and absorbing the enormity of starting our lives together that we won't even notice how crowded it is!

   Tahiti here we come!!!!!