In which Matthew gets honest

Well, it has come to this. Obama won and I can't enjoy it because Prop 8 passed. And life unforgivingly, tidally, pushes me back towards the passive-aggressive minutiae that is Northern California life:

Subject: Re: Wedding
From: [name withheld]
Date: Thu, Nov 6, 2008 at 11:34 PM
To: [me]

How are you doing? Haven't seen you in a while... you know since you missed my birthday and all. Hope you're over that cold though!

Heard through the grapevine that you and Ara set the date....ahem. Did you think I wouldn't know? Remember, I am on the kickball team and we are very well connected. All I'm saying is that you could have at least sent me a cordial uninvitation to your wedding, then things would not have to be so awkward between us: like me defacebooking you, stealing your firstborn, etc.

Feelings get hurt Matt... even stalkers have emotions... =?

Don't lie. I'm an ace at kickball.

And so it begins. Well, she asked for honesty...

Subject: Re: Wedding
From: [me]
Date: Thu, Nov 6, 2008 at 11:34 PM
To: [name withheld]

Truth be told, [name], we haven't solidified our Bay Area invite list by any means. We've only thus far sent out save-the-date information -- not an invitation -- to some, not all, of the people we'd like to invite on the west coast. We needed to act early for those who need to buy plane tickets and reserve hotel rooms, and we included a relatively smaller cadre of west coast friends with whom we have grown very close.

You fell into the category of "cool friends who we know but haven't gotten to know too deeply yet, so let's wait and see a little longer," with the understanding that once the event begins to take clearer shape we'll be able to modify everything as we send out official invitations. Most people wouldn't ask so directly, at least not until invites were sent out by postal mail, but since you did, there is your direct answer: our decision wasn't made yet. But now it's kind of awkward.

I was hoping to make it through this wedding-invite process with as little ill-will as possible, assuming that all members of our community would understand not only the massive stressful undertaking that it is to plan a bicoastal wedding that we can't afford even as both our jobs feel like they're choking us to death, and that everyone would also realize that any negativity shot in the direction of the event was, in some ways, a curse added to the blessing that the ceremony signifies. We have been trying our best to make this happen and get it right. The notion of a cordial uninvitation is unusual and impossble to do; to send one out as early as now would be ridiculous.

MMS