From panic to panic...

Thanks for your feedback, I'll stay with this project and stop fretting for now. There's plenty else for me to tie myself into reefknots over.

This is invitation week. I'm trying to contact everyone who is on the invitation list on my side to see if they can come. Many are overseas, and if they're unlikely to make it then I'm not spending $5 a piece on sending them a lush-looking invite. I'm also hoping to free up some space to invite people I want at the wedding. I always vowed if I ever had a wedding I would invite everyone I'd want at a big party, but it hasn't come out like that.

On the list there are relatives. Relatives I like. Relatives I don't mind. Relatives I quite dislike.

My closest friends are all on, but several live in London, Hong Kong or Bangkok and so most are unlikely to make it. Neither is my little sister. This leaves me with heavy boots, to plagiarise the fantastic book I just finished.

There are friends who I see or hear from infrequently who I've had to put on the maybe-list. I don't like having a so-called B-list, but it's inevitable if you hit a self-imposed ceiling, and it's easy to impose ceilings when you're shelling out on good food and grog all night. They aren't B-list because I don't like them, they're maybe-list because of all the people who have to be invited.

Which means every cancellation can be put to good use. And I'm not overly close to most of my relatives. Yet I must admit feeling a bit, I don't know, miffed that not one member of my mother's family is likely to come over. They're in the UK, so it's individually understandable, as it is with my overseas mates.

But collectively?

The fact that at a wedding full of relatives not one member of that wing of my family will be present is significant given that I'm my mum's only child. I think she'll be sad about it, I think it will drive home her sense of isolation that no doubt she's felt ever since moving across to Papua New Guinea and meeting and marrying an Australian in the 60s. Though I can't blame any of them individually, collectively it's disappointing. Pounds trade pretty favourably for dollars. Cheap airfares are everywhere in blighty. You get that, I guess.

Still, if in the wash I get to invite a couple more real friends, and they know how to enjoy a beer and a laugh, it will turn out ok...