It’s a shame that the LW writes for some advice about how to handle the situation and she’s called a hypocrite, dumb, without sufficient morals to retain any authority and her faith is questioned (um, that’s for no one but one’s god to question).

How is it that Cary is on her side? He says so but then unleashes with one of the meanest responses I can ever recall reading. And his brilliant advice? Think first next time. That’s the laziest advice I’ve ever heard. It’s the Friday before Labor Day Weekend. Maybe that’s why.

This column, both the author and the readers’ responses, has become one of the meanest places on the Web. Seriously, the tone is no different than places like The Free Republic. LW’s are just blood in the water anymore. My mistake for continuing to read here. I know it will depress me to see how callous and mean most people in the world are. Truly, makes me want to blow my brains out and the best part about it is that I won't be around to hear the cheers of strangers.

There are people who, no matter how much they claim to hate losing control or having chaos descend, actually revel in the chaos, as it makes them the center (frazzled, put-upon, stressed out) of the activities. Just the fact that the LW is pulling her hair out over the "crazy" relatives points to her unwillingness to take control and act like a grownup. She wants to be rescued instead of making hard decisions herself (e.g., she could have arranged the christening 6 months earlier, as originally planned). As someone else pointed out, she's signed as "It's MY Party (emphasis added)."

She somehow feels that every detail (including the needs of disabled relatives) is up to her, and only her, to resolve. This is egotistical nonsense. If the relatives can travel, they should have an inkling as to how to get about locally, and can enlist the assistance of relatives other than the LW.

There were good suggestions by others as to how to prevent people from camping at one's abode. They should be taken seriously.

The thing is, if the LW truly took control and refused to be blitzed by problems real and imagined, then she'd have no rationale to cry "poor me, poor me," which she's (I'm guessing) bound to do on and about the day of the ceremony. Family events are rarely perfect, but making oneself helpless is just fodder for craving attention and an excuse for things not going well. She needs to grow up, at least for the sake of her baby.

BTW, I don't get all the negative reading into her comment about "contacting the church." Wouldn't the church have to be contacted in order to arrange the date, as one would a wedding or any other church event?

I mean, everyone I know had the same sort of Christening - private ceremony with maybe 50 or 75 people in attendance, mostly family and old friends. After the ceremony, everyone trots off to the country club, or maybe the grandparents' house if it's sufficiently sized, and has brunch or canapes and drinks champagne and makes cooing noises at the baby.

We're upper middle class Episcopalians in the South, but I know Catholics and Methodists who have christenings just like ours, so maybe it's some sort of convoluted religio-social-cultural-regional thing.

It does sound like "contacted the church" means "we called up the church since we knew we needed a church in order to have a christening." I SUSPECT that if they were regular church attenders they MIGHT say "our church" or even "we spoke to our pastor" or "our priest."

The "upper middle class Episcopalians in the South" who have a "private ceremony with maybe 50 or 75 people in attendance, mostly family and old friends" and then brunch at the country club, are definitely retro: since the adoption of the 1979 Book of Common Prayer, Episcopal baptisms are supposed to be celebrated at the regular Sunday service in the presence of the regular congregation, who, in the ceremony, are called upon to promise that they "will do all in their power to support this child in his/her new life in Christ."

Most churches have been making a real effort in the last 50 years or so to move baptism from a private ceremony to a ceremony focused on the worshiping community, and from an insurance-policy-against-baby-going-to-hell to a celebration of the launching of a life of serious Christian commitment.

Not always successfully.

Had a baby then got engaged. Why bother with a Christening at all. It's not a party it's a solemn event in the life of a true Christian.

My family is Roman Catholic (not Italian, but of German descent), and the LW's description of the christening ceremony sounded perfectly normal to me. I've had several nieces and nephews christened within the last five years, and in all cases it was similar -- family and close friends come from out of town (if they don't live in town) and bring presents; the christening ceremony (separate from a mass) involves several families getting their children getting christened in front of those family and friends, with the godparents of the child playing a prominent role and other people taking pictures; and afterwards people get together, often at the parents' house or the grandparents' house (if it's nearby and suitable) to open the presents and eat. As far as I know, this is all fairly standard in the Roman Catholic church, though obviously it's strange and befuddling to some of the people responding here. A cultural thing, apparently.

I can't help but notice that the LW describes the christening as a celebration she and her fiance are hosting,--"WE contacted the church, ordered the invites, etc."--but when it comes to hosting the in-laws, suddenly it's "MY home, MY party, I'M the host, I make the rules" (emphasis added). Is it not her fiance's home too, and is he not an equal host? What does he have say about his siblings staying with them? She has a bigger problem than uninvited houseguests if she can't start thinking of her fiance's family as her family too, and her fiance as an equal partner in these decisions.