Focus

I've been reading about the difference between "entertaining" (focused on impressing people with your house, your fancy food, etc.) and "hospitality (focused on other people, not yourself).

I'm finding this especially relevant to planning the wedding. The wedding industrial complex is extraordinarily good at getting people to spend lots of money on goofy stuff they don't need.

I keep trying to remind myself: in ten years none of these people will remember what kind of flowers I had on the table, or if there were flowers at all. They won't care what my colors were or whether the plates matched. (Although since this mania is marketed peculiarly towards women, I do know any displeasure my aunts feel about the arrangements will be directed at me and not Jeff). This is not about me showing off. It's about people enjoying themselves and each other, yes, but that shouldn't center on how the cake was decorated. It should be about hospitality.

When you give a dinner or a banquet, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your kinsmen or rich neighbors, lest they also invite you in return, and you be repaid. But when you give a feast, invite the poor, the maimed, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you. Luke 14:12-14

I'm not sure about maimed or blind, but we are at least inviting a lot of college students . . .