The wedding planning has started getting interesting. (Hmm, how many words with -ing suffixes can you fit in one sentence? I’m sure there’s a better way to say that, somehow.) First of all, it looks like a whole bunch of my relatives are planning to come – which is great, it just took me by surprise that so many of them would make an effort to fly across the country to be at my wedding. I guess I didn’t know how important I am. 🙂 A good number of them are in Texas, Georgia, Louisiana & North Carolina, so it’s not exactly a short trip. So that’s cool, although I had a temporary moment of panic when I realized that we may not have enough room for people to sit during the ceremony. But you know, the ceremony is 15 minutes long, so people can stand if they have to, and then there will be plenty of seating for the reception. No big deal. Take a deep breath, everything is fine.

Anyway, these relatives are all from my mom’s side of the family – my mom is one of 7 kids and my dad is an only child, so I have lots of aunts, uncles, & cousins (hi, Alphagal & SNG!) on my mom’s side, and none on my dad’s. So that works out fine, everyone already knows each other and it’s a really fun group. When I told my mom about everyone that was going to be at the wedding, all she said was, “poor Dave.” Later, when I got home from work and told Dave about everyone who was coming, he was really excited about it for the first few minutes. Then the reality started to sink in. He said, “Our wedding is going to be so loud, isn’t it?” Yes, sweetie, it will be. Sorry. It’s one of those things about growing up as one of 7 kids – if you want to be heard, you have to yell. Growing up as the offspring of one of these yellers, you have to be even louder. So I imagine that with everyone in one place, we’ll probably approach sonic boom level.

In other news, Dave’s dad is apparently coming over for our wedding, which came as a total surprise. He hasn’t ever been to the U.S. before, even though Dave has lived here for over 6 years, so we weren’t quite expecting him to show up now. It’s good news, I just worry that most Brits already think of Americans as generally being loud & obnoxious, and I fear that my family will at least fulfill the volume end of that stereotype. Oh well, hopefully we’ll all be loud and nice, or loud and fun, so at least the obnoxious part will be proven incorrect. Here’s hoping. And if all else fails, at least there’ll be an open bar.