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AWOL wedding guests and other final wedding tidbits

One of the few less-than-bright spots about our wedding day concerned one table of eight people we sat together at the reception: only two out of the eight guests showed up. The table consisted of two professors on my doctoral dissertation committee and their spouses, a good friend from my grad student days and his wife, and a friend, S., who introduced me to one of my groomsmen and his wife. None of these eight actually showed. The grad school friend and his wife sent their youngest son (who I know fairly well) and his girlfriend along in their place. The remainder were AWOL.

Now that the wedding has passed, news about some of the AWOL guests has started to trickle in. My dissertation advisor's wife has been having upredictable health problems for the last year, and a sudden flare-up prevented them from attending. There is no exact word yet about what happened to the other professor, but, he's been sighted by friends of mine... so at least he is not dead.

S.'s absence has us rather annoyed. She more or less bullied herself onto the guest list by asking point blank several months ago "So am I going to be invited to your wedding?" on at least three occasions. When called on this behavior, she tried to beg off by saying "several people close to me have not invited me to their weddings and it hurt me." In the end, I decided that it would be a bad situation politically to not invite her since one of her closer friends was one of my groomsmen and she introduced us. S. said she was thrilled to be invited and would definitely come when she got the invitation back in April.

Well, that was then. Her only excuse about her non-attendance was made to my groomsman's spouse. It seems that her boyfriend is selling his house and had to host an open house that weekend. She didn't want to travel to the wedding alone -- in spite of the fact that two very good friends were also attending. What has Mrs. Geek and I annoyed is that she obviously knew about this well in advance of our wedding day and did absolutely nothing to tell us about it. She's flaked on invitations of various, smaller sorts before. Oh well. Mrs. Geek and I now feel that there is absolutely no reason to invite her to any events we're hosting again. Good luck and God bless, S. You're getting no more invitations from us.

One of the other small aspects of my wedding day that still pokes at an old sore spot regards my cousin J. I've written about him, his wife K., and their daughter Ka. here more than once. Mrs. Geek and I love them all, and feel very close to them especially since they asked us to be Ka.'s godparents. On the basis of relationship, J. quite naturally was asked to be one of my groomsmen. This is all fine and good.

The problem, if it could be called that, was that J. just as naturally charmed almost everyone he met at the wedding. I can recall one point late during the wedding reception when more than one of the bridesmaids commented on this, and it stirred an old sense of envy that I thought was long dead. The moment was far too reminiscent of a number of points in high school when I got to hear more than one pretty girl say "oh, he's such a fox". J. has the conscious ability to walk into a room and quickly turn all eyes to him. I don't, simply because I am a very different sort of person.

I find it odd and slightly embarassing that this old sense of envy still bothers me at all. I suppose that is because one reasonably expects to let go of most adolescent emotional baggage by the age of 35. I have a much better sense of who I am now... and about what the strengths of my personality are. I also know that the bridesmaids who commented on his charm hold me in good esteem for somewhat different but equally valid reasons -- and I will likely hold on to the praises of one of them in particular from the reception for a long time.

Well, this is enough of wedding-related flotsam and jetsam. I suppose that I should be bracing myself for the next inevitable question to be asked by relatives, in-laws, and friends: "so when are you and Mrs. Geek going to have children?" We've been married for less than three weeks and already this question has been asked more than once.

said drgeek on 2004-07-15 at 11:39 a.m.

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