Oh, bless you. You are in love. You are happy and have been planning your "special" day for the past year, and now it's finally time to send out the invites.
You've printed the sickly sweet invites - either with a ridiculous poem asking for cash instead of presents or a wedding list from John Lewis where all your friends will immediately look for the cheapest items first - and now you are ready to put them in the post with a spring in your step.
(As an aside, my personal favourite is - "Your presence is the best present". Oh, do fuck off you pair of massive twats, we all know you want cold, hard cash really).
Oh, but wait! What could you do to make your invite the bestest, sparkliest, most fantastic invite to ever fall on your friends and families doormats?
You could add glitter to the envelope!
Who doesn't love glitter, and after all, you are going to be a Princess for a day!
Fuck off with your glitter, or your sparkly confetti, or the tiny metallic hearts.
No one over the age of six likes glitter.
I know you want to spread your happy pixie dust, but please, I don't want to have to get the hoover out after I have opened the post.
I am very glad that you are currently in a haze of vomit inducing happiness, but I had to get changed before I went to work because I looked like a fucking unicorn had shat on me.
Do you want to hear the truth? No one cares about your stupid wedding invite, and here's why:
No one gives a shit that you are getting married.
Seriously, no one cares. Your parents probably care, because to them it means that they can possibly stop bankrolling you now, but honestly, no one else does. If you are at that terrible age (32) where all your friends are also getting married it will just be another hassle to everyone else.
A chance to see if their wedding was better or if they can out do you when they have theirs, yes, but on the whole, other peoples weddings are boring as fuck.
Our first thought on opening the invite after "fuck sake you pair of cunts, I've got purple glitter all over the floor" is, "how much is going to this wedding going to cost me?"
The present. Something to wear. Travel to the venue which is usually nowhere near where any fucker lives. Taxis. Trains. A hotel. The list goes on and on just to watch someone you sat next to in geography for two years and have only spoken to on Twitter since walk down the aisle.
You might think you are lucky if you have been invited to the whole day - the service, the reception and the evening party but you will invariably spend the entire day bored shitless.
Bored in the service while the bride gets all her cute little cousins to do shite readings of poems about love, and bored when you have to sit through the vows that the couple wrote themselves.
You know when people cry at weddings? They are actually tears of boredom.
If you went to the stag, will you be able to get the picture of the groom with the strippers tits in his face out of your head while he is telling Penelope how much he loves her and wants no one else but her? He really seemed to like those strippers in Prague last week, especially the blonde one that he tried to pay for a blow job.
Then you will have to hang around while the photos are taken. Penelope (lets call her that, I like it for a bride) usually looks like the back end of a bus, but today, she has had her hair and make up done and the pull in granny pants are making her arse look small, so she wants to make the most of it by having a billion photos taken.
If you are lucky, while this is going on, you will have on luke warm glass of pimms thrust in your hand while you freeze your tits off hanging around in a churchyard or a park waiting for the photos to finally be over (tip: locate the nearest pub and sneak off there until they have finished).
If you have been invited to the reception, you will have to eat the food that the bride and groom have decreed you will eat while listening to Penelope's dad talk about her childhood. You couldn't care less about what Penelope did at Uni and how proud her parents are of her and you certainly couldn't give a shit about the dead Grandma they all keep harping on about.
All through the speeches you have to sit there and pretend to look happy just incase that bastard photographer who has been creeping round like a pedophile in the bushes manages to get you in shot. There is nothing worse than seeing yourself on Facebook a month later looking bored and pissed at the exact moment when Penelope's father is describing how she saved another child's life during a Duke of Edinburgh expedition (you don't give a fuck about that either).
If you haven't been invited to the reception it is because Penelope and ... Edward, let's call him Edward, haven't deemed you a close enough friend to pay for your meal you have the horror of hanging round some God-awful provincial town for four hours. There are a few ground rules to abide by.
Do go to the pub. But do not get too drunk. Do not skip the evening reception because you have copped off with the barmaid/barman and would rather spend the evening shagging them in the staff quarters instead. Do not get drunk and turn up at the reception shouting about the time Penelope gave you a blow job in the student union bar.
The thing about the evening reception is that it usually doesn't cost a lot (cash bar), so the bride and groom will invite everyone from work and people they are only on nodding terms with just to make themselves look really popular and like they have loads of friends.
If you have only been invited to the evening do and it has a free bar, Penelope and Edward are saying this to you; "We don't like you all that much, but we want old school friends to think that we are really popular and have loads of friends now and you are one of the people we have chosen to make up the numbers".
Penelope and Edward don't actually like you. Sorry.
The second harrowing thought on receiving the invite is "please baby Jesus, don't let me be invited to the God awful hen/stag do which will cost the earth and is probably in some European shithole"
The stag will either be a trip to a European city to drink cheap beer and look at tits being waggled in the stag parties faces, or it will be some terrible outdoor pursuit type thing in Wiltshire involving forced fun and quad biking/go karting/shooting and the pub after.
If the best man is a real twat (and they usually are - choosing a best man is like a competition to find your twattiest ever mate) then strippers will be involved at some point after the days activities, because boys, nothing quite says "I love you and want to spend the rest of my life with you" than oggling other naked women and possibly getting your cock sucked the week before your wedding. That's love, right there.
The hen do will be no better. There will either be lots of screeching, crying, getting pissed, vomiting while eating a kebab and drinking cheap Cava from straws shaped like a penis, or it will be a cup cake and bunting making morning followed by horse riding. Probably in Wiltshire again.
Or if you are very lucky, the bride to be will expect you to shell out a months wages to go to Magaluf for the weekend to get chatted up by men young enough to be your son.
The last thought, usually while trying to rid yourself of glitter is, "I give them a year anyway".
It's what we are all thinking.