The Flamingo Ties…
February 11th, 2008 @ 6:21 pm by Mrs. Flamingo
As I was reading my previous posts, I realized that I haven’t really given a background on my complicated Flamingo family. I attempted to explain a bit during my January broadcast, but let’s just say that didn’t work out very well.
I need to draw all of you a picture. (’cuz I need visuals… and believe me you will need them too)
To give you an idea: My sisters aren’t my sisters, My grandpa isn’t my grandpa and my stepmother is best friends with my mom. For a more detailed explanation look here.
Getting The Guest List Is Like Pulling Teeth
February 11th, 2008 @ 12:51 pm by Mrs. Toucan
While I don’t really rely on the Knot checklist, I do check it from time to time. After all, it’s fun to check off things! However, there is one thing that has been on the top of the list for MONTHS that I’ve been trying to check off, but haven’t been able to.
The guest list. Getting the guest list together has been more complicated than I imagined. Since our wedding is mostly family, I had a general idea of who was on the guest list, so the fact that I hadn’t received a list from my parents was fine - until now. I’m getting ready to send out invitations, so as you might imagine, I actually need to know who I am inviting!
Finally, I asked my dad about the list again, and out spilled another complication. First, I got the usual, “Why do you need to know right now?” Then, the rest of the exchange:
Just When You Thought It Was Safe…
May 12th, 2007 @ 1:48 pm by Mrs. Plum
Your previously passive, go-with-the-flow, laid-back FIL decides to go on an “invite-spree”. Of course it would happen. With less than 6 weeks to go until the wedding - AND the invites have already been mailed.
What’s an “invite-spree” you say?
Well, it’s when someone who isn’t the bride or groom (aka someone unauthorized) invites a bunch of people that the bride and groom don’t know to their own wedding - yep - when the bride and groom are picking up the tab.
He’s trying to invite people with titles like “his boss’s wife’s brother-in-law twice-removed.” Seriously??! Seriously?!?! SERIOUSLY?!?! 
My FI is very against this and already told him no - but he’s still pushing it.
How To “Nicely” Let Someone Down
May 9th, 2007 @ 12:28 pm by Mrs. Plum
Thanks for all the advice on my post yesterday ya’ll (gotta throw in some of my southern charm here 
)
It’s just difficult knowing how to act / what to do because we were friends for so long and our friends are sort of friends with him - AND he’s been talking about “how fun” our wedding is going to be for over a year or so, assuming that he was invited already!!
He moved to another part of the state around 2 years ago, and we rarely hang out or even talk online anymore unless he needs something and/or is bored.
How do you break the news to someone that they’re not invited, when they already thought they were coming?? 
Pesky Almost-Guests
May 8th, 2007 @ 12:03 pm by Mrs. Plum
This is most definitely a rant. I have this one guy, let’s refer to him as “Joe”, who keeps pestering all of my other guests to see whether or not they have received their invitations. I have not sent Joe an invitation because I am still trying to decide whether or not I should invite him. You see, we have somewhat of a ‘history’ that makes the situation awkward. However, we are still friends. He and my FI are friends as well. They were friends before I ever started dating FI. Anyway, Joe is being very pushy and almost confrontational about where his invitation is. Everyday he asks me where it is, whether or not I’ve sent it, and asks my other guests if they got theirs yet (they did).
To make things even more awkward, I have this girl friend, let’s call her “Susie”, she is friends with Joe as well. However, Joe has had a massive almost obsessive crush on her. The last time we all hung out together was at our other friend’s bday. Basically what happened was Joe got drunk off his ass and started being overly aggressive/touchy-feely with Susie, when she was busy hooking up with our friend. Joe saw this and got crazy jealous, drinking even more, making snide remarks and trying to be grabby with Susie, when she was clearly with our friend. Basically, Susie was rather inebriated herself and Joe tried to take advantage of her. Later, Joe pretended that he didn’t know what we were talking about. Joe just made the entire night really awkward and uncomfortable for everyone involved. Oh yeah, he invited HIMSELF to the birthday celebration. Nobody wanted him there, he just found out about it and decided to drive over 100 miles to make it to a party he wasn’t invited to.
Listing Is A Chore
March 26th, 2007 @ 4:40 am by Mrs. Kiwi
As I’m sitting here, pondering and slaving over our guest list, I need a break. Mr. Kiwi is sleeping (it IS technically 1:36am), and I’m grunting to myself. Since we’ve yet to tackle the seating chart, I think the guest list is my least favorite thing. Although we’re about 7 months until the big day, we have to send out Save the Dates soon, as my friendly Knot reminder tells me.
My oh-so-lovely grunting is due to my list issues. We have a ton of random people who, while some of our “closest family and friends,” don’t have names I can remember. Sure, there are nicknames and things like that, but I don’t know if “Diana Unknown” would appreciate reading that on her invite. *sigh* As I go through all the actual lists I have and all the mental lists I have, I probably am missing 79% of the addresses and 25% of the last names. And since no one asked, I want you to know those people are mostly Mr. Kiwi’s. 
Now that I’m serious about getting this guest list SOLIDIFIED by this week, I need to get the addresses and names as soon as possible. I’d also like to get this info without really letting these people know that we’re not quite sure what their son’s first name is.
And Guest…
March 16th, 2007 @ 2:18 pm by Mrs. Kiwi
So many of us are planning weddings on a budget. This may mean having less than spectacular flowers, less guests, different food, a cash bar, etc. This begs the question: are you allowing guests to bring a date?
Amongst my family and friends, those who have boyfriends/girlfriends, have been together a long time. So those significant others will be invited. What about the cousin/friend who is not currently dating someone, but wants to bring a date anyway?
The guest list is usually a huge object of contention between many couples and their families. Although I really don’t want to anger anyone in my family, why would I invite you + guest if there is no one in your life; not even a prospect? It may sound rude, but I really don’t want to invite your date if that means I can’t invite a friend instead.
Our guest list is as large as we can allow. We are paying for every single penny of this wedding, and trying to avoid expensive nights out so we can invite more people. Yeah, I guess I’d be slightly bitter at having to fork over more money for someone I’ve never met, and someone our guest has just met.
Working on the List
March 7th, 2007 @ 6:03 pm by Mrs. Kiwi
Mr. Kiwi and I need to do some finalizing on the guest list. We need to do this relatively soon, so we can send out our save the dates to the OOTers. While I REALLY don’t want to do this, it’s an absolute must.
Mr. Kiwi is the last of his 2 siblings to marry. Both of those marriages were paid for by the parents, so I feel bad for him because we’re the only ones who are paying for it ourselves. Since his family knows this, they are understanding should we have to cut a few generations out. Another great thing about Mr. Kiwi? He’s very ruthless when it comes to cutting people out. His method: if we haven’t seen you since we got engaged, or they don’t know who I am then you’re off the list. Bless my babe.
So, even though he has a plethora of family members, it’s all good if some aren’t invited. My family, on the other hand, is a vast hispanic clan. It’s taken as an insult if you don’t invite your cousin’s stepson from her first marriage. And while they know that we’re paying for it ourselves, they will still guilt me. But I must come to terms with knowing I’m going to have to play editor and deny some people invitations. We cannot have more than 150 guests, and people will just have to accept that, right? Now, the issue is Mr. Kiwi’s work people.
Adding Guests
January 29th, 2007 @ 12:30 pm by Mrs. Blueberry
I’m stressing about our guest list again. We sent out the STDs fairly early, since our wedding is on Memorial Day weekend and I wanted the guests to have plenty of notice. Alas, this is only creating problems for us…
I know that we must send invites to everyone who got STDs, but there are some people who we forgot to include in our original count and are held at a “higher status” than some others already on the guest list–our friends taking precedence over my mom’s co-workers, etc. Since we’re just plain out of space to add more people it looks like we can’t just add our friends to the guest count :(.
All I can hope for is that enough people will RSVP “no” fairly early, so that my friends can be invited a bit later…I hope they will be understanding if they receive their invites just a bit late. What a bummer.
Anyone else have this problem? Have you discovered a marvelous solution to it?
Naughty Guest List from the Knot
January 17th, 2007 @ 8:32 am by Mrs. Peach
Has anyone used the Knot’s guest manager to do RSVPs for their wedding? Mine seems to be acting up. Yesterday it showed that I had 5 yes’s and 5 no’s. But when I checked the actual list, I could only find 5 yes’s and 2 no’s. And then today, I received another yes via email (service provided by the Knot guest list manager), so I went to the website to check again. It now shows 6 yes’s and 6 no’s!!
Has anyone else had this sort of problem? This is the only way we’re accepting RSVP’s. Ahhhhhhhh!!! This is what I get for sending invites late and thus having to do RSVPs via online. >_< Speaking of invites… I promise I will finally show the weddingbee world this week what they look like. I wanted to wait to send them off to my guests first.
