With Bells On

So we didn’t send out too many paper invitations, because the wedding is pretty soon upon us and we are lazy busy people.

They turned out nicely, for homemade from a kit.  We are also cheap budget-conscious.

This is the reply card:

As you can see, Mother will be in attendance, allegedly with bells on.

The whole bell thing got The Lovely Rhonda to thinking.  It’s customary to shower the bride and bride with something as they leave the sanctuary, the church, the billiard hall, the Walmart — whatever location they have chosen for their nuptials.  It used to be popular to use rice, but then everyone got upset about the poor birds eating uncooked rice and getting tummyaches or something.  Then it was birdseed, but it turns out this makes for slippery conditions, and no one wants a newly-married man or lady to end up in the hospital with a sprained ankle (youthful bride) or broken hip (me).

So, says TLR, we shall have a basket of little bunches of bells, and so they shall ring us out.

Now, I can see a few flaws in this.

For one:  there will be children in attendance.  Children cannot hold still.  They like to ring bells.  They think that wedding ceremonies, no matter how awesomely lesbian and long-awaited, are super boring.  They will jingle bells when bells ought not be jingled.  There will be shushing, and perhaps crying.

Also: that is a LOT of bells.  I know, because I went to the place where you can buy such things and I bought a sh!t-ton of bells.  It will sound like a hive of angry yuletide wasps.  I’ll be surprised if we escape with our eardrums and/or sanity intact.

And?   Holiday PTSD.

But, despite all this, or perhaps because of it, I think it’s brilliant and look forward to sitting around tying bunches of bells together to put in a basket.