How not to throw a wedding dinner

In the vein of honest toddler...tips for parents on how to organize a wedding dinner to incur the most expenses and frustrate the highest number of people..

Lessons from my younger sister's wedding...

Seating plan. Who needs one? As mother of the bride, make sure you don't divulge any details to anyone even your closest family members about who you are going to invite and 3 hours before the dinner start, you only share the information under severe duress by the bridal couple and a very irate third daughter who loves law and order and then proceed to insist that toddlers don't count and put two families with 4 toddles requiring 4 toddler chairs at the same table, effectively rendering two seats void. In case we are not clear, one seat even if it is a Chinese restaurant, is a whopping $120...

And then you also ask the bridal couple if they'd like to do a tea ceremony a couple hours before the dinner and said you'd call the relatives on the spot to inform them and when they look at you in bewilderment, you brush it off and say,"don't have one then...that means that you don't get your Ang Paos.." Hence infuriating the couple who actually don't care very much about money and who just wanted to please you anyways..

As the father of the bride, one of the things that you can excel in is time management; you shout at everyone to hurry up and remind me that it would be disastrous if they were late but actually nobody is late, you are just making everyone tensed and agitated..and increasing the stress level wherever you go..you also insist on certain family members on not being present for the wedding festivities because of their horoscope...at the end of the dinner, you can also choose to complain about the food and also inaccessible location of the restaurant..

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All said, the wedding still turned out pretty ok in the end...  and I guess both sets of parents can heave a collective sigh of relief and rest in the knowledge that my younger sister is now all ready to produce offspring... 

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I thought I could learn from my younger sister's wedding and plan it better....my mom just dropped a bombshell...apparently my dad was so aghast that my younger sister didn't go ahead with the tea ceremony that he does not want to invite any of his relatives for my wedding... what??! and she asked if I could reduce the number of tables... man... who is this wedding dinner for anyway? mom is not excited about it...one of the most hurtful things she said was, "I'll only want to throw a wedding dinner if it's for a son.." (She doesn't have any sons by the way..) and now Dad doesn't want to invite his relatives... Dennis, I'm sure will be fine with not having the dinner and me, I think it's just a huge circus... and will be rather relieved not having to go through the parade...and so far, none of the overseas friends I've invited sound too thrilled about it (they were more excited when there wasn't a confirmed date..)..So for whom is this performance for?  

ahhh...God, you know that my heart's desire is to do the 'right' thing and to 'please' my parents...why is this so hard? Maybe sometimes the right things are not the easiest and issues in families get magnified, not diminished during 'happy' but extremely stressful events like weddings...
 
alright..soldiering on...and getting ready for the show.....