Second update: Saturday's wedding planning

[ailbhe]

On Saturday, early afternoon, Rob's parents arrived to do Wedding Things. His mother translated the Swedish song into English, so that I can ask the Registrar to approve it as part of the ceremony. Then we ate a picnic lunch and headed out to the Town Hall to meet the caterer.

That went well; the caterer knows his onions, and has organised far more weddings than I have, and was very helpful indeed. We arranged where we will take the photographs, and the few points of contention that I knew were going to come up did, in fact, come up, and were resolved - not very graciously on my part, but there are communication-style reasons for that which I may go into later. First, we didn't want to do a cutting-the-cake bit, but other people want us to, so we will, and secondly, we have vetoed hand-held camcorders at the event, very sorry but I hate them with a passion unmatched by any other up to and including my dislike of gift lists. So I was implacable on one point and gave in on the other.

After that we went via the hotel and Rob's mother talked to them about the arrangements, and then we all came home and had tea.

There was a brief moment that could have been nasty when I was looking at my hard-earned seating plan, over which I furrowed my brow and sweated blood, etc, and she said that it'd be nice to sit some of Rob's paternal relations with some of Rob's maternal relations so that they could meet. I snapped back "As far as I'm concerned, they should have met at your wedding; I want them to meet my family now." Thankfully Rob's father stepped in at that point to remind people that the meal is only part of the whole thing and people can mingle afterwards too.

I know it's her son's wedding too, and I know that he's the first of her two children to get married, and that's very exciting. But sometimes I wish that weddings were still hosted by the bride's family, rather than by the couple themselves, and I had a good excuse to ignore everyone else. (No, I don't really wish that, any more than three year olds really wish they were dead. When you hold your breath until something happens, what happens is that you start breathing again).

Very commendably, neither one of Rob's parents remarked on the fact that I'm still smoking; that used to be a constant bugbear (Smoking's bad for me? I should give up? Wow! I never knew that!) for a while. I really appreciated that.

Comments

[astrogeek.livejournal.com]

I'm totally with you on the camcorder thing. I'm taking it even further though - I'm banning all cameras of any kind from the formal parts of the wedding. after all, what am I paying the photographer for?

[ailbhe]

We're not paying a photographer; I hate photos, so I'm certainly not paying for any. And I can't ban all cameras - my mother-in-law would hate it - I'm just going to ban flash photography. Totally.

We're getting married in medium-to-dimly lit room.

*snerk*

(Though we are taping the whole thing for my grandmother-in-law, from a fixed point).

[astrogeek.livejournal.com]

well, seeing as we aren't having any guests, the one area where I had to give in to parental pressure was the photos, so that all the various members of my family who I refused to have actually at the ceremony will be able to see them. I normally hate photos too.

After meeting a really nice photographer (who doesn't generally do weddings) and speaking to her I was quite converted though. We will have very few (possibly even none) posed "portraits". All the photos are going to be "action" ones, taken generally without the subject's attention. The thing she suggested I remember is that the photos are one of the few things that we'll have left after the day (pure marketing I know, but it worked on me ;).