You can't win with planning an affair (no, get your noses out of the gutter, ladies). My mother decided my wedding should be a beautiful hotel on the Eastern shore of Maryland on Thanksgiving weekend. She did that thinking it would be a nice long weekend for my future inlaws. Well, was that a mess. I never have stopped hearing about the Thanksgiving traffic. This has been forever.
Then came my son's Bar Mitzvah. It was scheduled months after his birthday, because of the Jewish holidays. I decided Canadian Thanksgiving was a good weekend, because of my Canadian family. It was also a holiday in Massachusetts, for my (d)ils (who left the part precisely at 11 pm so they could leave at 4 am; they could not be bothered to stay until the party was over.) Geez.
I was trying to accommodate people's schedules. It doesn't matter because you can't make everybody happy. The bar mitzvah was like a major wedding, sit-down dinner, open bar (il's family doesn;t do this???) very expensive. Some people showed up for the service and left and didn't mention that they weren't coming to the party.
Manners and good sense go out the window when people are invited to a formal event.
My mother always taught me that you never say "no" to a happy occasion because there are too many bad times. So, you go, no matter what. But I would draw the line at a crazy destination wedding (unless it was DS, I should live so long.)
And yay for satellite and internet! Back in touch with the world!
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