Today is a very special day for one of my family..it is her wedding day.It is going to be a ‘celebration of joy’ which will be shared with 100 people who bring her the most joy. How exciting it will be…only I won’t be there to enjoy it..in fact none of the rest of my family will be there…we weren’t invited!!

The bride-to be is my niece(brother’s daughter) who announced on Facebook some time ago that she had become engaged. Now my family love a good wedding and we were all looking forward to getting new outfits for the occasion, plus keen to meet the prospective new groom who had captured her heart. As she is in her 30’s, my niece had taken her time and chosen carefully the man she wanted to spend the rest of her life with, so he must be pretty special….

My brother and his wife had themselves been married for twenty-odd years, which is a record in my family! Mum and Dad divorced when I was very young (both re-married), and out of the rest of us, one has never been married but has two children by two different fathers,one has been married twice, two married three times, and one separated from his wife and in a long-term relationship with his current girlfriend; (as you may have gathered, there are a lot of us).

Added to her long list of aunties and uncles on both sides (her mother’s family is also large, but they have only had the one spouse each),there are a huge number of cousins as well, so I can imagine that it would have been difficult for her sorting out the numbers for the wedding. However, the rest of us have managed to plan our numerous weddings without too much trouble, incorporating all of the family and friends.

Anyway… after the engagement, things went quiet for quite a while, until good old Facebook told us that a riotous Hen Weekend had taken place during the summer… All of the ‘Northern’ lot were there (Bride’s mum’s family), and there were some lovely pictures of them having a wonderful time, plus lots of comments from the bride, enthusing about how fantastic her family were, and lots of little inside jokes about the weekend….

Needless to say the ‘Southern’ lot (my family), we a little upset that we hadn’t been included in this weekend. However it did look pretty expensive and perhaps the bride thought we wouldn’t have been able to afford it. After all, most of us have ‘menial’ jobs including cleaners, drivers, health care workers, teaching assistants etc, whereas the bride is a buyer for a top fashion chain, her other relatives are high-flying sales people,owners of exclusive boutiques, and other glamourous well-paid jobs.

Never mind, there was still the wedding itself to look forward to…however the invitations never came… So today, as my bother is giving the beautiful Bride away, in her wedding gown made by her mother, plus six bridesmaids..I wonder what he is thinking as he makes his speech.. Is he glad that our 82-year-old mother is not there voicing her opinions? (she has reached the age now where she feels she can say what she bloody well likes, regardless of whether or not it might offend someone); Will he miss the sight of his 3 sisters dancing around their handbags? cackling like witches as one of them(usually me) trips over something and lands in an undignified heap on the floor), would my eldest brother show him up with his many tattoos and his unique idea of what outfit is suitable for a wedding? would he not like to jostle with my other brother, about who is the more successful out of the two of them? what about his nieces and nephews, would he not love to see  them enjoying themselves, all catching up with each other’s news?

No doubt I will see the stunning wedding pics today on Facebook as they slowly emerge, and I will be happy for the bride and groom,…however, although I will never really know why us Southerners got excluded from the wedding ,(the above perhaps is a bit of a clue), however dysfunctional we all are, we are still decent people!