Wednesday, May 21, 2008

Double the size

I don't know if this a good thing or not, but my list is more than double the size of my fiancee's list. My list is 176, her's is 67. This is going to be a lopsided wedding. I guess I will give her our college friends.

Hmm, 243 is the total with about a 20% decline rate = 190. I wonder if this is doable.

Family Friends in Guestlist

What do you do with your family friends? They are technically your parent's friends anywayz. Do you allow them to invite them? Here is my logic. You invite your friends, then you pay for them. Makes sense. If you want to have your friends, then you can at least chip in and help pay for them.

Now if your parents are giving you money for the wedding and you are doing some 50/50 or 33/33/33 split your parents should be allowed to invite Ghandi for all you care. Weddings are not cheap and they do not save up to spend 10-20K on a wedding. They donate, they can invite. I have people who restrict their parents on who they can invite to the wedding. YOUR PARENTS ARE FRONTING THE BILL! Where else are you going to get a massive amount of no-strings-attached Gs from anywhere. The least you can do is show some respect and gratitude by letting them enjoy the wedding with their friends. Shit all the friends that they are inviting are all richer than your friends which = BIGGER & BETTER GIFTS. Do the math. You probably end up making out better anywayz.

Guest List

So what do you do when you are trying to plan a wedding. I have no frickin' clue really. What I do know is that I want people at my wedding for a reasonable price a place is nice. It is like buying people. I want this guy for $100. I want him for $75. I want him for $50. SOLD!

So I guess the first thing is to compile a list of guests. First off, my family is big. Now it ain't as big as some other families, but generally Cantonese families are big. My family was small and then they immigrated to America where you can have as many babies as you want. So the family decided to have kids, remarry and have more kids. Those kids all had kids who had more kids and more kids and it was just an endless parade of people. Am I suppose to know all these people? No. I hope not, because I surely don't. We get invited to weddings for people where is my dad's half-sister's son's daughter's wedding. Say what? How far from the tree is that removed. Must be at least 3.

So I started putting the list together and realize, damn, I could invite 200 people just by myself. The sad part is, I put people on the list and I don't know their last names or all their names so they get the label "1". I mean in our family, we grow up without the formalities of Uncle and Auntie because essentially every person we meet becomes our "Uncle" or "Auntie". Chinese people love to grow their family even though they aren't family. I guess it is a gesture of respect, but who knows why they want to be in our family, but as long as they keep giving me red envelopes I will call them "Uncle", "Sir", "Mao", "Holy Master", or whatever.

Man this list is growing fast. I am sure I forgot people. I hope my finacee's list is short.

Tuesday, May 20, 2008

The Mission

You ever wonder if you can actually have a "budget wedding" anymore. To most people in major populated areas this can't really be done. Yet I have had friends who are on the opposite ends if the spectrum. I have had friends do weddings for 125 people for 7K and 100 for 12K and others doing 300 for 60K and 150 for 80K. Now granted the one for 7K was seriously out in the boonies, but you have to make sacrifices if you want people there and budget wedding. The norm most people tell me is that it is $200 per head for the wedding. So if I wanted 200 people, it would be 40K min. But I want a budget wedding. My budget wedding is 200 people for ...

...
wait for it...

...

$20,000.

Yup. That is right. $100 per head. Can it be done? Only time will tell.