In a earlier post I reviewed Names and what to look out for when naming your child. This story is a fun example of why.

One day while checking the mail I was surprised to find a wedding invitation. It was addressed to my husband. It wasn’t a surprise that I didn’t recognize any of the names on the invitation. I had only lived in the area a few years and he had gone to high school there. I showed him the invite and he thought he recognized the bride’s name as someone he went to school with. (Clue 1) I sent in the RSVP thinking it would be great to meet some of his old high school friends. Not to mention that I was excited about getting out the house for a few hours. It had been a long time since we had a date night without the Spawn.

One the day of the wedding we got my in-laws to watch the Spawn, there was only one then, and went to the church. The church was an adorable old New England style building with white siding and a high steeple. It seemed huge as there were only enough guests to fill half the old wood pews. As we entered the church a few people gave us curious looks. (Clue 2) I decided that they just didn’t recognize or expect my husband. He had joined the Air Force after high school and looked a lot different.

The real fun started when we arrived at the reception. The place cards were all on a table in the foyer. We searched but couldn’t find ours. (Clue 3) We found the bride’s mother and mentioned to her that we couldn’t find our card. She was very sweet and came to the foyer to help us look. She asked for our name as she didn’t recognize us. (Clue 4) Her eyes lit up when she heard it as if she suddenly figured out the problem.

“Oh you must be the grooms best friend. So glad you could make it. I’ll get his mom. She probably has the card.” (Cue the Clue Fairy) At this point we suddenly realized that we had a problem. My husband didn’t know the groom. We waited while the groom’s mother approached. She was visibly confused. We were not the people she was expecting.

She told us that the person they meant to invite, who had the exact same name as my husband, had called to say he couldn’t make it. She had crossed his name off the guest list so there was no place card. She offered to add a few more chairs and place settings to a table for us but we didn’t want to be a fuss.

She explained that the groom was in charge of getting mailing address for all of his friends. Since he didn’t actually know the addresses he looked them up in the phone book. As it turns out not only did the friend and my husband have the same name but they lived on nearly identical street names. We lived on “Road”, the friend lived on “Highway”.

As we left the groom’s mother felt so bad that she told us to take our gift with us. After some discussion I finally told her what the gift was. A cross-stitched wedding sampler. It’s not the sort of thing that you can give to someone else. We left laughing at the days events and how these types of things always happen to us.

A few weeks later we received a  sweet, handwritten thank you card from the couple. One day we may actually get to meet them.