My Big Fat Guangdong Wedding
Chapter 5. The Guest List
My darling fiancee and I were chatting about the wedding dinner. She said, “We should only need 2 or 3 tables.” (at 10 people per table). Holy Abacus, Batman! That can’t be right!
10 people per table. How many tables do I need?
Let’s see… How many wedding guests can we expect? There’s my good friend and landlord, his lovely wife, and their daughter (my niece). In other places, this would count as only 3 people, but then there are his brothers, uncles, cousins, father, and assorted wives, children, and girlfriends of each. A rough estimate is 20 (2 tables)
Other friends amongst my villagers include a couple of drinking buddies, some neighbors, and the local sector “Dude” (I have no idea what his formal title is). This could end up being anywhere from 1 to 2 tables.
Her former neighbors, some relatives in town, and a few coworkers. About 2 tables.
My Chinese friends. If I restrict this to the absolute top of my A-List only, 1 table. Otherwise, at least 2 tables.
That puts the guest list around 6 to 8 tables.
Yesterday I was at the board meeting of Millicharity, my local charity group. My fiancee wasn’t available, so I brought one of the Cantonese twins to translate (almost everyone else in Millicharity is local, so they were speaking in Dongguan-style Cantonese). I carefully explained to her that I really liked all the people there, but I wanted to only invite the guy in charge of the charity. I explained that this is not because I didn’t want to invite the whole group. I carefully explained that this is because I’ll desperately need charity myself if the guest list keeps growing. 
The plan was to wait until the meeting broke up and to quietly invite him. As soon as the official business was over and the general chatting started, she managed to mention my upcoming wedding so that everyone in the room heard here. After a quick round of congratulations, I ended up with another table full of people.
That makes 7 to 9 tables, with some tables probably ending up with 8 or 9 people instead of 10. Last night my darling asked if I could drag some foreigners to the wedding since that would give her more face. I told her that I understood that having a foreigner or two at a social function might give face, but how could having extra foreigners at a wedding where she was marrying a foreigner help any. She said that she thinks of me as Chinese (another reason why I love her so much 
). I thanked her for the compliment, but pointed out that not too many of the guests share that opinion. I’m not sure how this is going to end up.
My worry now is two-fold. First, this is getting freakishly large (and EXPENSIVE). Second, I’ve already found that RSVP on party invitations isn’t exactly something one can count on in China. What happens if we get more guests than seats at tables? What happens if I’ve got 7 (or 8 or 9 or 10) tables set up and then get a bunch of last-minute no-shows? It would be embarrassing to have all those tables ready (and paid for) and have a bunch of them be empty. 
Only 2 months and 5 days left. 
WHEEEEE!!!!
I’m going downtown now with my beggar’s bowl to raise some funds to pay for all of this.
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