Tuesday, 07.01.2014 - 9:49 pm.
I discovered in horror last night that today was the 1st of July. Suddenly, I'm 15 days away from traveling to my home country with Andrew, to take part in a psych congress and to have a religious ceremony/engagement event. I woke up this morning with that in mind and in one second I was wide awake with my mind running.
I have some important things done already: the presentations for the congress (we're going with four, only one left), and the final scores and reports of my students for this semester. Still, I've been putting off the worst: sending out the engagement event (not a party) invitations to family.
See, I have a large family, my parents have (or had) five to six siblings each, and most of them have three children, give or take...an aunt had none and my very own parents had five. So it's been excruciating. I can pretty much choose easily who I care to see at my engagement thing but it's still nasty to leave out the rest. In one case I'm inviting one cousin and leaving out his three siblings. But each cousin comes with a significant other and kids. This one cousin comes with a SO and three children they take everywhere. It's just too many people, man.
Even more uncomfortable is to invite my three brothers' in-laws. I don't have any particular attachment to them but I thought, hey, family of my family. They've been good to us, and it's good PR. But I want to bury my head in the sand and not have to send those messages.
Oh, yeah, I'm sending out invitations by e-mail. It's too expensive sending out so many by mail from here, and it's too much of a hassle for my parents back at home. I feel like I'm doing everything wrong though. I don't care so much about these wedding protocols and it shows, and now I'm terrified I'll be judged because of the way I'm handling everything. "This isn't how you invite people to an engagement event!", etc. I'm afraid I'm already burdening and embarrassing my family too much with my cluelessness. I guess this is where following tradition comes in handy.
Andrew is very proactive but he can't help with the organization of the event at my home country since he doesn't know anybody. He just tags along, trusts my decisions and will pretend to be catholic when needed. That's good enough.
I was going to send out the invitations today but I'm missing some e-mail addresses so I get to put it off one more day. But just one, the event is on the 26th and I gotta let them know in advance. But, I say, it's not a wedding per se so fuck that three-months-prior rule. It's going to be a mass and then lunch. The end.
I sent out the invitations to my friendss on the weekend, that was easier. But the response rate has been poor. Meh.