The Invitations

Well, we sent most of the invitations out yesterday, there's a handful that we've still got to round up addresses for. I know many people received them today. I had a big dilemma with the invitations...who do I send them to? The church we are getting married at is small. We were very limited to the number we could invite. Now many times in Calhoun Fallls if there's a wedding around it's an open invitation. I can very well understand that...it's a small town, and everybody knows each other. Jeff's from Greenville...which is quite different in who you know. There are some neighbors he doesn't even know...just a casual wave as you're passing by. At home if we see a neighbor out, we'll stop and chat a while. Now if we had decided to get married at Northside an open invitation could've worked....not really any space limitations. We chose Lickville Presbyterian because it's very picturesque. I noticed the little church over 10 years ago on my way to Greenville, and thought what a pretty little church to have a wedding. I'd told several people if I ever got married it would be there (or a nursing home cause I thought I'd be really old when I found my guy). So one day Jeff and I were going from his house to CF, and we were talking about weddings, and I pointed the church out. When he proposed, and we started thinking about where the wedding would be it immediately came to mind. It also works out well for us because it's between CF and Greenville. I knew right away when we chose the church that the space limitations would be somewhat of a problem; that I would have to limit who I invited. We decided to invite family, our closest friends, and our closest church family. We made our first pass guest list, and naming everyone in those groups we had more than filled our guest list. So we stopped. We've invited more than the church can hold with that. We're very sorry if someone feels left out because they weren't invited. That was certainly not our intent.
So I had another dilemma of the same sort. When it comes to showers do I invited people I haven't invited to the wedding. Well, I had no clue. Now there are people I wanted to celebrate with; those I'd grown up around, but because of our numerical constraints couldn't invite to the big day. I asked a few people, and they told me to invite them to the shower, so I have.
I don't want people to think that I just want a gift from them and don't want them to attend the wedding. I don't want anyone to feel hurt because of any of that. No, I don't think neither Jeff or I are so important in folks lives that they are torn to pieces over any of it, but I also know how quickly and easily feelings can be hurt. I've also heard from a few brides that people will ask why they weren't invited....even years after the event. I'm restating it here and now....We're sorry we couldn't invite everyone we wanted to. Our space is limited.

Okay, onto what we did today. We, along with Jeff's parents, visited the church, got to see it up close again, got some measurements, and talked about the rehearsal and wedding. Yay, we're both SO ready!