the wedding "party"

As I write this post, I'm pondering the terminology. Why is it that the people we ask to be most involved with the wedding are a "party"? Hopefully we will have a party with everyone, otherwise we've slightly missed the point of the day!

There are four people in our lives who were always going to be a key part of our wedding. They're all under the age of 6. Inspector Gadget has two nieces, and I have two young cousins. Conveniently they are two girls and two boys, and are fairly closely paired age-wise. The two eldest started school this year, and can be trusted to walk from me to Daddy on the big day (hopefully without too much bribery). The youngest two are both copycats, so we're hoping they'll follow on. But the youngest is a little monkey, and absolutely anything could happen!

To supervise them and support me and my mum, I have asked my aunt J to be my matron of honour. When she married 10 years ago, I was her chief bridesmaid, and she was excited to return the favour. She's also a Brownie Leader, so is used to organising large numbers of children, and the trouble-maker belongs to her anyway! Without going into the details of my family tree, J is my mum's sister but she is only a year older than me, so is more like a cousin in many ways. She also has the family craft/creativeness gene, which I am hoping to make use of!

Gadget has asked his brother to be his best man. It took him longer to ask the question, but he's not known for his speedy decision making! It means that our wedding party will all be family, which I'm quite excited about.

There will be no row of matching bridesmaids and ushers. We will ask other people to be involved with the day, but we haven't worked out what we need people to help us with yet. I have already asked Team Warwards (my old university housemates) to plan my hen night. I hope I'm in safe hands!