Mistaken Identities

I'll start with two stories.  That shouldn't surprise anyone who knows me.

One.  About three weeks ago, Nora and I were in New York, and managed on a Friday night to get the immediate family together for a dinner at Blue Hill, Estelle's favorite restaurant in the whole world.  She knows everyone there, they all know her, and she's been welcomed as a part of their family.  So Estelle and Nora and Nora's brother Ellis and Ellis' wife Joanna and I were all there at a table.  Estelle was beaming, and called one of the other waiters over to introduce everyone.  "These are my children," she said, gesturing around the table.  "This is my daughter Nora, and this is my son Ellis, and these are their wives."  I've claimed throughout this entire process that I'm more the bride than Nora, so it was good to get objective corroboration.

Two.  This afternoon, we had a wonderful day celebrating the birthday of Betti Jaquay, and making some mileage on the wedding ceremony with her husband Nelson, our officiant.  [Note to Wanda—See?  We ARE making progress on the ceremony.  Get off our backs.]  Betti told me that when Nora and I were first seeing one another, long before very many people in Middletown Springs had met me, Nora was happily explaining who I was, what I did, how she was beginning to fall for my cat Ed.  She probably went on... she does that when she's happy.  After she left, Nelson and Betti were trying to puzzle out the names.  "Is Herb the cat, and Ed is the boyfriend?  Or is Herb the person?  I don't remember.  They're both people names..."

At this moment, we've got about 85 or so people whom we know for sure will be at the wedding, and I predicted two months ago that we'd finalize at 146.  That's a LOT of people to meet over the course of one afternoon, and I fully expect to see lots of people leaning over and having private conversations in the other's ear.  "That one... Herb's brother, the one we talked to a minute ago.  What's his name?  Phil?  Will?  I know his other brother is Barry..."  (It's Bill and Jerry, by the way.) 

We don't really want to go the way of name tags. 

HELLO!  My Name Is _________________________.  

I'm related to the 

_____Bride

_____Groom

in the following humorous way:

_____________________________

Nah.

We could hand out scavenger-card sheets, and give a prize to the person who got the most signatures of other guests over the evening.

We could give everyone RFID cards so that when they went over to get a beer or walked up to see us, an LCD screen would light up over the bar with their photograph, name and hometown.

We could give everyone color-coded badges:

• Red for blood relative of the bride
• Blue for blood relative of the groom
• Orange for long-time friend of the bride
• Green for long-time friend of the groom
• White for people we only know together
• Black for people who snuck in and don't know anybody.

In the end, we've decided to go low-tech, and just give people a lot of opportunities to meet and talk with one another, a pretty 19th-Century solution.

On Friday 6/24, we'll be having a paper-plate, bring-a-bag-of-chips, BYOB picnic at our house from 4 to 10.  Drop in whenever, stay as long as you want.  The grille will be going.  If you're from out of town and don't know anybody, this will give you a chance to meet some folks to hang out with the next day.  It'll also give US a more relaxed opportunity to be with many of you, because the next day's gonna be kind of nuts.

On Saturday 6/25, there's going to be a wedding.  Just in case you'd forgotten.  And there's no bride's side or groom's side to the seating.  There'll be some milling around prior to the ceremony, and a prosecco toast afterward, and some pre- and post- music by our friend Elizabeth.

Later on Saturday, there'll be a reception down at the Town Green, from 5:30 until well after sundown (and being this close to the solstice, sundown will be pretty late at this northern latitude).  There'll be assigned seating at first but plenty of opportunity to re-shuffle, and a couple of places to play and listen to music.

And on Sunday afternoon 6/26, the Middletown Springs Historical Society (which owns the building housing part of our reception) will host its annual Strawberry Festival.  Dozens of gallons of ice cream, dozens of flats of strawberries, a couple of hundred biscuits for shortcake, fresh whipped cream, fresh lemonade.  It's a real summer institution here.

So by Sunday evening, you'll have had several old-school opportunities to learn people's names.  (The RFID video monitor thing does sound pretty cool, though.  I'll have to look into that.)