Easy wedding invitations

“Oh right, wedding invitations!” We are attempting a small reception: a few family members and the friends who helped us renovate or actively welcomed me or my fellow into the circle.

To our delight many far flung relatives have called us up to say they’d like to come. It warms my heart to have that show of support. We started out with a thought to elope – except my Mom would never forgive me. So then it was us and the Moms and it didn’t seem right to not have the siblings and and and – I keep bumping into people I want very much to invite too. So, we have outgrown our backyard and our BBQ. Dear Bowen friends offered up their gorgeous large home and beach front garden. This is poetic. I did a writer’s retreat at their place a couple of years ago and that is when I fell in love with Bowen.

But while renovating and moving and workshopping an opera and doing further revisions to Chickens opening in Saskatchewan, I keep dropping the juggling balls. Like invitations. Oh, and a caterer!

The kids humour me as we do a selfie in the backyard. I slap this onto card stock with the details for the big day: dress comfy, a link to the ferry schedule, don’t bother lugging presents, just come.

When I approach the man at the print shop with my over exposed picture and my word doc formatting which gets as fancy as “centered”, he looks up at me in surprise. “This is for your wedding?”

I look down at his hands covered in rings and his wrist circled in gold. I suddenly realize what I am wearing: a faded shirt covered in paint, cut offs, old sneakers and my legs covered in flea bites, (my car has fleas! Just discovered…transporting my dear old dog…)

“Yes, it’s our wedding, just a casual BBQ!” I over explain. He looks at me with a resigned sigh that I interprete as, “Oh you trailer park Special, what wedding is this, number five? I bet he’s not the father of either of these children, poor sucker.”

I then remind myself that he probably doesn’t care one whit and is simply figuring out how to colour correct my photo. Fellow dislikes this picture because It looks like he is a big floating head: his body blocked by grinning children giving me, graciously, the only shot without a very silly face. And I have the where-with-all to look at the camera instead of the button I am pushing.

As I watch our faces duplicate: smile after smile after smile after smile, it warms my heart. Both Fellow and I had a big wedding previously: and from the sounds of it, both were fantastic and beautiful events. I like how different this one is. How simple it is. Kind of like us. Our love is easy. It doesn’t take much work to have a whole lot of love and a great deal of fun.