No ring no bring

I bloody hate that expression.  I think it’s awful but I can’t think of anything as succinct as that to make a decent title for this post.

“If you aren’t married to the person we are inviting then you will not be invited to our wedding” doesn’t trip off the tongue as easily as the above.  Which is why it is clearly the headline the tabloids are going with for Pippa Middleton’s wedding on Saturday.    Pippa and James Matthews,  her beau’s, wedding wouldn’t really be on the radar of the national press were it not for the fact the bride is the sister of the future Queen of England.   Or that her backside almost stole the show at that sister’s wedding a number of years ago so photographers are now keen to see what her arse dress looks like this time.

Rumours have been rife about who will or won’t be at the wedding this weekend, hence this “no ring, no bring” line because apparently the happy couple have brought this rule into play.   I am guessing for two reasons, one is that James’ brother is a bit of a “lothario”, known as much for his role on a reality TV programme as he is for his ever changing “love interests”.   The latter point sort of makes it tricky to put a name on an invite when that name might be superseded in a week or two.    And the other dilemma is should Prince Harry’s girlfriend be invited?  She is a long term girlfriend, but also media interest around her may mean that Pippa doesn’t really get a look in on her own day, which no bride wants.

And the papers have been full of this wedding for weeks.  Posh loos.  A glass marquee flown in from Belgium.  Do we care?  Should we care?  No not really.  It is there wedding and I couldn’t really care less about the money they are spending on it.  “but they are connected to the Royal Family and the public won’t like it”   Oh do shove off.  If a sister in law’s wedding is going to make people judge the royals in a different way from their current view point, well they clearly have too much time on their hands.  Judge the royals if you must (I won’t, I love them) but don’t make it be on the basis of what a non-royal with a wedded connection is legally doing with their own money.

But I am going off on a tangent here, my original point was about this wedding invite rule.

So what to do?

And do you know what?  I don’t think any of us should give a stuff quite frankly.   Who’s business is it who gets invited to somebody else’s wedding?  If they have brought this rule in, then so be it, it is their wedding.   We had a bit of a similar rule at our wedding nine years ago but it wasn’t about guests being married to each other, it was a very simple one “Will we know who they are when we look back at our wedding photos in years to come”   or “will they still be a part of our lives”.   If we felt somebody was a significant enough other to pass that test, the ring made no difference to us, and I think with only one or two exceptions everybody still is.

The same with children.  I have heard so many people get quite irate about the fact a couple “ban children” from their wedding.  No they really don’t ban them.  It is a simple case of bums on limited seats.   We had a venue that only held 70 people for our ceremony yet if we invited all the children of our friends there would have been 46 of them.  So who gets side lined?  Our good friends from uni / work or relatives or a three year old?    So we made no apology for saying to people we weren’t extending the invite to children unless they were mine (er obviously) or god children.

And I don’t see why Pippa and James should have to apologise or explain their invite list either

photo of a wedding courtesy of Shutterstock