Chapter 7: when to back down

This chapter could also be called "the story of the bell" for reasons I'll explain later.
I have built up to this chapter in several places as I have urged keeping the happy couple happy while preserving relationships and avoiding hurt feelings. I found this happened easiest and best for me whenever I would back down.
I had very strong opinions about what the baby girl's wedding should and should not look like and what it should and should not contain.
Many of those opinions came from my desire to include people who I felt were most important in the equation. Some of the opinions came via things I had seen and liked. Or didn't like. The ones that got me in the most trouble with the bride were the ones I camped on via tradition.
I love tradition. This is not to say the bride is opposed to tradition but at one point she did declare" somebody has got to put Momma on a short leash."
Initially, I was more amused than offended but that changed. One idea after another was shut down. The wedding planner, my sisters, the father-of-the-bride, over time, sided with her on many of my ideas. It finally occurred to me that maybe the ideas were not so bad, I just had way too many of them.
That's when I realized that backing down was in order. Whether or not we used table runners was of no real importance in the grand scheme of things. That I loathe eucalyptus and the bride clearly favored it for her bouquet, also not a thing to be stressed about. Note that it says: "her bouquet" because that is what I said to myself over and over again.
"It's her bouquet" and "it's her music" and it's her wedding" became words that played over and over in my head.  Do if you hear that I wanted a orchestra or the Rockettes at the wedding, that is a huge exaggeration. I did want there to be live music but I would have been satisfied with a stringed quartet.
And I may have mentioned a children't choir, but that was just in passing.
I did think that the bride should have included all the children in her own and the grooms family that cared to participate even if it meant carrying a sign that said "and they lived happily ever after." ("Mom, I do not want people running around my wedding with signs" said she) and I did think she should have a church wedding. But I backed off all of that and fairly quickly, I might add.
Where I dug in my heels is in the case of the aforementioned bell.
Here's the story: when the Hub and I married, a sweet little friend of his family gave us a sterling silver bell. I loved it on sight (mostly because I loved its source but it is a pretty thing.)
It has spent many a day and even more nights on the nightstand of one of the children when they were sick and too hoarse to call out. I read, at some point, about an Irish wedding tradition in which a bell is rung to announce the bride or to signify  the pronouncement of the couple as man and wife. I was taken with the idea as my pretty bell came to mind. I went so far as to take it to the ceremony site and designated its ringer.
Then it disappeared; from me at least. It was no where to be found. There were several suspicious faces turned my way when I asked if anyone knew where it might be. Turns our it was hidden because a shutter near the hot cocoa bar. One of them told me. I retrieved it. Determined to use it. And then thought better of it.
Basically I am saying, I backed down.
After all, it was not my wedding.