Musical Chairs

With the final tally of butts to seats in it was time to finish up some loose ends. I started with the easy one. I wrote all the names on the place cards. It was actually during this process that I made my final call to my last unresponded family. I was amazed, he called right back. They couldn't make it, which I had guessed at this point. He was sweet though. He said, "But I love you and I'm happy for you! I hope you guys stay married forever!" It made me feel a lot better. They didn't hate me and they weren't repulsed by the idea of someone marrying me. Honestly, between you and me, I really started to take things personally by the end of the RSVP process. I don't know about bridezilla-ness, but there's certainly an extreme girlly-ness that starts to emerge. It never bothered me too much when we got a "No" because traveling during the week is tricky. What started to make me a little nuts was the unresponded people. I started to imagine all sorts of insults they'd suffered at my hands and how much they hated me.

It sounds silly, but it's no surprise because the guest list from start to finish was emotional for me. Once that was settled and my "yet to responds" were a more than acceptable zero I finished up place cards. I love those kinds of tasks. You should see our Christmas card envelopes by the time we mail them out (pictures, glitter, swoopy letters, etc). I kept it simple with the place cards. Just my best swoopy letters.

Next was the dreaded seating chart. Actually, I had a head start because we did a "rough seating chart" right after invitations went out to see what it would look like if everyone came. It was through weddingwire.com where I have my guest list so as people RSVPed no they were automatically un-seated. We got rid of 3 whole tables off the bat. We have two kids tables by age so those were super easy.

The wedding party and their significant others are all sitting with us at a feasting style table. King and Queen (aka Bride and Groom) at the head. So, that one was fairly simple it just took some seat shuffling. The rest of the adult guests were a true puzzle. 10ft round tables seat 8people. While everyone knows Mike and I not everyone knows each other. It took about 10 tries to make it make sense. I needed parents near the kids tables, divorced parents at different ends of the room, out of town friends with other people they could talk to and so on.

At this point every guest has a seat and every table has a name. Mike took the chalkboard easel to his mom with a list of who's sitting where so she can make our seating chart. Yay! Check.