Love and Lobster Coastal New England Weddings

We continue following the wedding plans of Maine transplant Jen Pepper.

I love watching reality competition shows… The Amazing Race, Top Chef and of course, Project Runway. I love the excitement of the game, the problem solving and the social interaction between the camera and the contestants. I, however, do not envy having to utter those famous last words and watch someone’s dreams of becoming America’s Next Top Whatever fade away as they walk off the stage. Mostly because, now that we started our guest list, I know what that feels like.

I had no idea that creating “The List” would become such a fiasco. We are having a fairly small wedding on a boat, so I assumed the guest list would be a piece of cake. Turns out, having a limited number of spots (and life jackets) actually made things more complicated. What was supposed to take an hour out of a relaxing Sunday afternoon was anything but.

The beginning of the list was simple. Our parents! Check! My two sisters! Double check! Matt’s sister and boyfriend. Good to go! Matt’s brother and wife… and their new baby? And that’s when the complications started showing up. You can’t bring a baby on a sailboat! Will someone have to miss the ceremony? Will they need to bring someone else along to watch their bundle of joy on dry land? Will we need to add a place setting for them at the reception? We were only 9 people into the guest list and already seconding guessing our decision to get married on a boat.

With a headache on the horizon, we opened up Excel and started a spreadsheet with hypothetical columns. One column for people we knew wouldn’t miss it for the world. One for those who we weren’t so sure could make it. And one for anyone who didn’t fit in the other two columns. We quickly found ourselves staring at a bunch of overflowing columns, and a bottle of Advil. So we turned to the one place that had all the answers… our parents.

They were quick to point out that if we invite one relative, we need to invite all of them on the same branch of the family tree. So either all our aunts and uncles were invited, or none of them. Using this new piece of logic, this still put us over our maximum sailboat occupancy by quite a few people. While my head started to spin, our parental units reminded us that not everyone was going to drive, fly or otherwise trek up to Maine for a weekend wedding. So we are throwing caution to the wind and inviting them all! We also decided to have a local party in each of our respective home towns later on next summer. That way our guests that can’t make it don’t feel that they have to rearrange their schedules to be a part of our Maine celebration. We don’t want to turn our big day into a big obligation for our family and friends.

With our list in hand, we can finally start to the fun stuff…