How to Tame The Gargantuan Monster

The organisation begins with a cautious look around venues with little or no clue of what is expensive and what is extortionate, but requesting numerous brochures from here there and everywhere just to get the ball rolling.

I suppose the most vital thing to decide when starting the arrangements is what kind of a do you’re going to put on... Will it be little or large? Will it be church or secular? Will it be London-based or countryside?

As a Polish Catholic (my mum’s side... ‘Smith’ is more Croydon than Eastern Bloc), the church thing was a given and, as I’ve always had the romantic notion of getting married at the Marylebone church that my parents did, London was quickly decided upon. In not too much time we then found a lovely hotel located just around the corner from the church which, whilst not cheap-cheap, didn’t make my dad wince too hard. The hard part done, my fiancé and I took to the sofa to put together a first draft of our guest list.

Oh. Good. God. Now, I wouldn’t say I’m Mrs Popular 2012 but, without a bottomless budget, I have literally no idea how you are supposed to create a guest list for your wedding and NOT offend anyone when making your final cut. Every night I sit in front of Eastenders with my laptop on my lap, sighing at the Excel document in front of me. The ‘bloody list’ (as it has become known) has developed into some sort of gargantuan monster. Every time you look at it from a different angle it grows extra limbs which throw up more awkward questions into the mix...

Can a ‘first cousin once removed’ be removed from the list? If I haven’t met her partner, do I have to invite him? If I have met her partner and dislike him, do I have to invite him? I wouldn’t recognise my cousin if he ran me over – does he have to come? Should we have an ‘after party’ to accommodate the ‘B list’ or would they rather not come at all? If we invite them, will we have to invite him otherwise he’s the only one of ‘the group’ who isn’t invited? Do we have to invite their children? What if the children are teenagers? Do you think we can miss her off the list because they were arguing last time we saw them so hopefully they will have broken up by then?

You end up measuring your friendship in “If I were to see her out on the street, would I offer to pay for her lunch?” which is, in fact, fairly absurd, because I’ve never knowingly done that for any of my friends (don’t judge me! I don’t get paid much!) It’s got to the point where we’re considering NOT sending out a Save the Date so that people, well, don’t... We’ll be whooping every time someone sends us a negative RSVP! And that’s not the right spirit at all really, is it?

The general consensus is that it is utterly necessary to be completely ruthless. People understand the situation; weddings are an enormous cost and, unfortunately, you can’t invite everyone. Having said that I still haven’t worked out the final draft and am putting off going back to bloody thing – there really is something to be said for eloping to Gretna Green.