How Not To Plan Wedding

So you and your intended plan to get married.

Good for you!

And for whatever demented reason (maybe, like me, you did time at an alternate high school where every single effing decision got hashed out in series of endless "Town Meetings") you have decided to included everyone who is interested in your upcoming nuptials in every critical decision related to your nuptials.  Time, date, location, the kind of service, each particular of the reception, etc.

And since you have lots of friends, family, colleagues, casual acquaintances and well-wishers with very firm opinions about every detail, lots of mutually incompatible ideas end up on the table.  High church vs Unitarian vs synagogue vs Wiccan vs Baha'i vs 10 minutes with a judge at town hall.  Family-style vs buffet vs vs six-course formal service vs gauchos slinging acres of meat "Fogo de Chão"-style.  10 people in your back yard vs 20 people at a Holiday Inn  vs 50 people at a chalet vs 200 people at a chartered beach resort.  (You say you can't afford a chartered beach resort?  Maybe you need to postpone for a few years until you and your fiance run fundraisers and take on 2nd and 3rd jobs to pay for it.)

Because you and your intended were crazy enough to crowdsource the planning for your Big Day, you are in for a nearly impossible task: a long, contentious series of meetings among people of good will all of whom have radically different ideas about every single effing decision affecting that Big Day.

Which is a pretty grim prospect.

You know what would make it much, much worse?  Would transform it from a staggeringly (and unnecessarily) complex undertaking into a complete impossibility?  

Allowing people to participate in your Big Round Table who do not think you should get married at all.

Who not only think that your marriage would ruin America, but have stated clearly and publicly that they intend to monkey-wrench using whatever leverage they can wrap their paws around to frustrate, delay and, hopefully, destroy your upcoming nuptials.

Our national table is big enough to included all people of goodwill.

And our national table is strong enough to bear all of the necessary, complex and contentious fights between and among people of goodwill that democracy demands.

But out national table cannot survive the predations of a mob who insist that busting that table up into kindling, burning it to the nailheads and pissing on the ashes is an act of high patriotism.

And yet every day, in every media and public policy venue, people who sincerely believe in doing just that 

.are handed axes and torches and told to have at it.