No, although I am Gujarati and I’ve been to many a function there. Actually, my wife is Canadian so the wedding was near Toronto.
Mr J and I will be eloping.
Ever since I was 15 or 16 I’ve been telling my parents I’d call them before we board the plane to ________ (some tropical island). Since the beach ceremonies aren’t legal marriages, we’ll probably head to the courthouse beforehand.
We don’t want a big wedding. He is not in contact with any of his family and we don’t have many friends. We both view things as “It’s our life and our future. Lets officially begin OUR lives the way WE want to.”
We wound up getting married with 150 people watching. It all happened this past summer and it was lovely.
My father felt the need to invite everyone he’d ever met, and luckily some of them were on vacation, so it was actually smaller than originally expected. (He was paying for it, so I didn’t object at all.)
And because I’m a little attention-whoreish today, I give you Mr. and Mrs. Only Mostly Dead (Note: The crowd you see in the background was only about a quarter of the people, as there were guests on 3 sides of the dance floor.)
Me and my sweetie, a notary (they can officiate in FL) and a couple of people in the notary’s office signed as witnesses. Afterwards, my sweetie and I went to McD’s - it was a Friday at lunch and we both had to go back to work.
For our 6th anniversary, we did a reaffirmation of vows in church, then went to my inlaws’ house for a pot-luck party with the guests - there might have been 30 of us in all. It was nice.
My daughter will be getting married in May or June 2008 - I suggested she elope, but she wants a sorta ceremony with the white dress and all that. I may still try to talk her out if that…
We had about 150 people at our wedding. Originally, the plan was to go to Vegas, but by the time all was said and done, we had about 50 people who wanted to go to Vegas with us, so we decided to just make it easy and have it in my hometown.
It was a fairly traditional wedding - long, white dress, veil, tuxes, flowers, etc., but we threw in a lot of non-traditional touches like a handfasting, a funky cake, oldies and big band for the music, the ceremony music was all Broadway and Beatles, and we didn’t do the bouquet/garter toss. We had a horse and carriage for our ‘getaway’, which gave the night a magical ending. My parents paid, although we offered to pay. I’m their only daughter and they refused to let us pay for it.
I was against a big wedding at the start, but it was a wonderful day and honestly, I’d do it again in a heartbeat. We do plan on going to Vegas on our 5th anniversary to renew our vows, but that’ll just be the two of us - we can have the Vegas wedding we wanted:).
E.
Ten bucks. That’s right, one Hamilton, who my husband strangely resembles (sans wig). It’s only $10 in Mesa County, CO and you don’t even need someone to officiate. I guess it was $20 if you count the Stouffer’s lasagna we had for dinner but I didn’t pay for that. At the time we were dirt poor; I think the ten bucks came from recyclables.
My husband is Catholic, and although lapsed would like to get our marriage blessed at the San Gabriel Mission. He identifies very strongly as a Los Angeleno and the Mission is pretty central to LA history.
We’re going to do something lavish when we’re both done with school in 4 or 5 years. We’ll take our honeymoon then, too. We are doing two weeks in Rome and have begun saving and planning.
If we invite the people we actually want it’ll be roughly 40 people, but it’s looking like we’ll be inviting 110 guests and expecting 70-80.
We were originally going to elope but his parents thought we might regret not having a party and very generously offered to pay for the wedding. We’re hoping to keep the budget somewhere between 5k and 10k.
Congrats to you and Mr. Kairos!
I’m not officially engaged, though things seem to be moving more and more in that direction, and I’m finding the idea of trying to decide how many people to invite and what kind of event to have to be pretty daunting. Luckily, I get to watch a close friend do it all this year (my turn will probably be next year) so I’ll get to observe and figure out how to do all this without going crazy.
Thank you so much!
Mr. Cake, myself, and the Right Reverend Knepper. $25 for the license, $5.00 for a box camera, $15.00 for some flowers, dinner at Marie Calendar’s afterwards (we both wanted pie after the trauma - the whole thing was a big game of chicken with each of us expecting the other to veer away at the last minute). If I had to do it again, I wouldn’t change a thing. Coming up on our 16th anniversary this year.
5 people, including the groom and myself.
However much it costs for a marriage application in Adelaide, South Australia. 15 minutes for the ceremony. $80 for my new skirt, top and shoes, $8 for my bouquet of baby’s breath (no roses!). Quizno’s subs for the reception/lunch and cold rock ice-cream after. It was all over in about an hour, including getting home.
2nd anniversary was yesterday (20/1).
WhyNot,
I hope you understand this post in the spirit in which it is meant–I fear it may come across oddly. I greatly admire the wedding you had–but would totally not choose it for myself. I admire it not because it was inexpensive, but because based on other posts you have made, you had a wedding that was meaningful to you, and reflecting you and the life that you and your husband (and son) intended to live together. For me, a wedding like yours would feel staged and fake and just not right, but you got wonderful memories, a day which was meaningful to you, and a story you can tell for the rest of your life–even if your lifestyle changes dramatically.
My ideal wedding would take place in the sanctuary of a church–preferrably one where the groom and I attended regularly. It would likely include a number of the traditional trappings–and I don’t see much point in planning beyond that until (unless) I find a groom. I’m not sure whether I would want to invite all my friends and family from all over, as opposed to just inviting my immediate family. But to me, making my vows in front of not just God and the minister, but also (some of) the community of which I am a part is important and symbolic.
And so, I admire the wedding you describe, because while all the details are “wrong”, in essence I think you very much had the type of wedding that I wish more people would have, not a wedding that makes sure that all the Bridal Industry Barbie Dream Wedding details are included–but also not a wedding as bare of celebration and community as some of these weddings with as few witnesses as possible. (No criticism intended of those who chose weddings with as few witnesses and little fuss as possible–it’s just not MY dream wedding).
I would happily elope or just go to a court house and be done with it. Just thinking about being part of a wedding stresses me out. Sadly, my dearest wants an actual wedding ceremony. Part of the reason, he says, is because he wants to have a few beers with my dad (who doesn’t really drink) afterwards but as far as I’m concerned, they can do that anytime.
I don’t know how big a wedding he wants. Hopefully it’d just be us, family and close friends.
If I ever get married again, I’d like to be married here:
http://www.innatirving.com/ - The Inn at Irving Place in NYC. 50 people max.
VCNJ~
Didn’t want a big wedding. Had 29 people there. That was what we preferred. I’ve been to huge weddings that were a lot of fun. Just not my inclination as a bride. We went to a vacation-friendly town (Charleston, SC) out of our home state and the invited friends/family flew in.
My in-laws tend to entertain a lot, and I knew they wanted a party, so they threw one for us a few months later. They invited all their friends, planned it just the way they wanted, and we just showed up, brought the photos, and smiled. Worked great as we were all pleased with getting what we wanted.
We had a modest wedding - about 350 people, no special frills. It was at a wedding garden not far from Netanya, halfway between my family in Haifa and my wife’s in Rishon. First we had cocktails, then the ceremony, then the meal, then some short speaches, and then dancing.
Two rather unusual aspects: we had an excellent DJ who did what we told him to and didn’t talk, which was wonderful - I hate those guys who won’t shut up; and we had dairy catering. My wife was a vegetarian at the time, and besides, we wanted something different from the usual wedding fare, especially those awful parve desserts.
Of course, neither of us ate a bite all evening, but the caterer let us keep the leftovers, so we feasted on hors d’ouvres later that night in our hotel room.
Oh, absolutely! I like to share it because it’s a good example of how you can do something totally and completely NOT like “it has to be done” and it can be beautiful and meaningful, and even those who expect something else will get it and find beauty and meaning in it if it’s right for you…me…one (English really needs to come up with a better anonymous second person pronoun!)
We had actually intended at the time for it to be a trial marriage called a Handfasting, followed a year later with the white floofy dress and all the trimmings. But we woke up the next morning and realized that that was IT, it was perfect and complete and we had married each other For Real and Permanent, despite not having a piece of paper from the state with our names on it. So we came back home and brought the piece of paper in to my boss (who is also a Minister who was also one of the six who did the ceremony) and she signed it over my lunch break. So my “legal” marriage was done at work, over Thai takeout!
So I should also mention that our other parents had all assumed they’d have a “real” wedding to attend later, which is why they skipped the “silly nonsense” one. Oops. One of these years we’ll have a formal anniversary party and try to make it up to them!
We had 15-20 people at the wedding, and 10 frillion at the reception.
It’s all a blur, but the food was good.
We had 25, mostly friends. The only relatives were our parents, my brother, and my wife’s aunt who lived with her parents. We wanted it small, and the moment we invited one relative we’d have to invite them all.
Our friends came from far away, so we wanted to actually talk to them. Almost everyone came to a “rehearsal dinner” at a restaurant after we checked out the hall. We got married at the Ethical Culture Society in Philadelphia, and had the reception at a nice restaurant. Then we went to the hotel and everyone else went to a party at her parents’ back yard, and we went back and joined them again.
We had to make it simple, because my wife was in Dartmouth, I was in Louisiana, and the wedding was in Philadelphia. But we wouldn’t do anything differently.
I’m not married and if I ever get married we’ll have to see what family duties he has. I’d much prefer a tiny ceremony - get married in a dress I’m actually going to use again (mind you, a bridal with one of those corset bodies would count as reusable 
since I love their effect on my top shelf and I imagine hubby wouldn’t mind it), go have lunch with our immediate families. But if he’s got social obligations it could grow real fast.
My married brother always said he’d get married on top of a mountain and have sandwiches for lunch. The first time we pointed out that mom is in no shape to climb Acherito, even from the south side (from the south it’s a several-km walk, from the north a several-hundred-meters vertical face), he thought and said “ok, helicopter rental.”
His bride was an A-type and it was the first wedding for both sets of cousins. 300 guests (more from her side than ours), definitely not on top of a mountain. I enjoyed it about as much as a visit to the dentist.