In three weeks...

In three weeks, I will be waking up (at the La Quinta, we ended up booking a room after all) and be married. That's a crazy thought right there.

But until that day the drama just keeps coming up.

Today, S was on the phone with his mother and it seemed like they were fighting about something. I asked him what was up after they hung up, and he got defensive. "Were you eavesdropping?" He never does that, so it was quite obviously SOMETHING he didn't want to tell me. After arguing back and forth and him telling me "just don't worry about it" (I'm thinking the worst. Are the people not making the food for the reception? Did something go wrong with the favors? Did she discover a long lost branch of the family tree, invite them, and now we have an additional 100 people coming!?)

Finally, after arguing: My mom doesn't know how she's going to cook the chicken for the wedding.

That's it.

But then it did, in fact, turn into a huge problem and a fight. S's mom, "E" knew that we wanted a chicken dish from the very beginning. Not only is it the only meat I eat, but it's the only dead animal my mom and my sister eat as well. To add to that, it's the preferred meat of my entire family. This was explained to her well before Christmas.

Now, she is complaining that she is making beef AND pork and doesn't want to make a bunch of chicken because, in her eyes, it will just go to waste. She wants to know the exact number of people who will eat chicken. Since we're doing a buffet, there's no way I can do that. I can't read our guests' minds. Maybe Uncle Larry loves dead cows, but on this particular day, he feels like chicken. What are we going to do? Make enough for 25 people to have chicken and when they go to plop it on their plates have the catering people ask, "Wait. Are you sure you really want chicken? Because we don't have a lot of this and it's just for the people who absolutely will not eat pork or beef." Perhaps if I would have known this before we sent invitations out months ago, I could have altered my RSVP card to indicate which dish they preferred, but it's a little late now for them to be telling me this.

Plus, E said she has asked around and "no one" knows how to cook chicken where it doesn't go bad right away. Apparently, although these people cook for big groups all the time, they have never dealt with chicken. I'm really not sure how it varies from pork or beef, but this is what she says they told her. 

Another suggestion? We get fried chicken instead of having a chicken dish made. Because that will go so well with Mexican food, right? I mean, and it will look unbelievably klassy. I've bent sooo much on the food, from letting the family do the catering to agreeing to Mexican food, to having my own family do salads (I learned this when going over the catering with her and said "We should do more than a potato salad because not everyone eats potato salad" to which she said "I'm sure one of your family members could do a salad.") Although my mom is more than happy and eager to make a salad, this is a day I want her to relax and be at ease. I don't want her to be working!

This whole family catering thing was one of the things I was most nervous about, and it's the thing that repeatedly comes back to bite me in the behind. It's the thing (okay, maybe aside from RSVPs) that we've fought the most about.

Looking back, I wouldn't have picked booking my dream venue over being able to afford catering. I would have probably agreed to have the wedding at his parent's house and have the event catered. Even something simple from the Country Gentlemen would have been so much less stressful--although it being in Prosser would have probably meant Desert Wind or Picazo 7-Seventeen (a little bit pricey).

I really hope S doesn't read this.