This is the same reason ours was small. Most of our closest relatives were either dead or unable (for reasons of illness or great distance) to travel. As a result, and even though they were local, we saw no need to invite Great Aunt Whatzername or Third Cousin Whozis, when neither my sister nor my wife’s mother and sister could make it.
I think our final count was 18. We were married in a small chapel, then we went to a private room at a nice restaurant for dinner. Most of our friends were professional or semi-professional musicians, so they brought their instruments, and provided music that way: one friend played classical guitar during cocktail hour; then after dinner, the more lively stuff began on a variety of guitars, fiddles, and such. Plenty of singing also; not drunken shouting, but since we had people who did choir work, session work, and so on, the quality was good. And a little dancing too, but no chicken dances or bunny hops.
It was a nice experience, and my wife and I have many happy memories of our day. I don’t think we would have been happy with the big church wedding with the huge reception with DJ and so on. But different strokes for different folks, and all that.
At the time of our engagement, my parents were under the strain of crushing medical bills for my mom, who had late stage lung cancer. Therefore, we had to: have the wedding quickly ('cuz I wanted mom to be there) and shoulder most of the cost ourselves. So, we had a 10-week engagement, and a $1,500.00 budget.
MIL built my wedding gown out of a prom gown I got on clearance sale for $32.60. I did the flowers for myself and my three attendants. We had the ceremony itself at the same catering hall the reception was in. We got a Unitarian minister, because we couldn’t find anyone else to officiate at the wedding of a Catholic and an atheist!
We had an absolute limit of 50 guests, though I had to really wrestle my MIL on this; she was insistant on inviting people I had never met, that she herself hadn’t seen in years! We did have an open bar, but everything was really reasonably priced.
I maybe would have liked something a little more lavish or something, but sometimes we don’t get those choices. At any rate, the wedding was wonderful, and we’re still happily married after 18 years, so you couldn’t ask for much more than that!
If we get married, my SO and I will probably have a very small wedding. Our families are split between the Midwest and Hawaii (the wedding would probably be in Hawaii), and we’re just not the big wedding type.
Personally, I’m a little uncomfortable with anything more than us, our parents, closest friends, and the officiant at the actual ceremony. I don’t know what our budget would be, but I feel more restrained by party size than cost. I’ve already half a mind to elope to Las Vegas, and if the wedding planning becomes overwhelming or unpleasant, I’ll insist on it.
Nava, that was the kind of wedding I had. My marriage didn’t work out but my wedding was pretty nice, 15 people on top of Whistler, a minister, my parents, my husbands parents (his father even made it up in the Gondola, although he was in a wheelchair) siblings and my bridesmaid. (who wore a nice off the rack dress that she has worn again many times) We had cake and sandwiches up top, with sparkling grapejuice, because the back patio didn’t have a liquor license.
My boyfriend wants something in the 50- 100 people range, dinner and dancing etc. Yuck. He can’t afford that and neither can I, so he is going to have to rethink. No use worrying about it, I’m not divorced yet, so the point is moot, anyway.
Well, we got married outside at my sister-in-laws place with about 100 people total. It was a pretty standard wedding, except we had some poi fire dancers as entertainment and then a couple of blackjack tables and a craps table. It ended up being more expensive than we were hoping, but it was beautiful and memorable (I mean how many weddings have poi fire dancers at them?). Everyone tells us it was one of their favorite weddings.
We had a traditional church wedding, with about 120 people including the wedding party. We used the standard vows, but handpicked each word from the version we liked best. It was perfect – the ceremony was joyful but meaningful (without even edging toward goopy), and the reception was so much fun! Our reception was at a place that used to be a cafe, with small tables and a dance floor, and the food was great. We knew everyone there, and it was just a wonderful celebration. Everyone says it was one of the most fun weddings they’ve been to. I wouldn’t change a thing.
We got married at the courthouse, had our family present, went to offtrack across the street for the lunch/cocktails, and won enough on the first race we bet to pay for everything. Worked for us. We hosted Thanksgiving dinner though the next day for the extended clan - that was kinda expensive for I think 20 people, but I don’t remember how much.
I’d like to get married in a field on a fine summer day, surrounded by maybe a dozen people.
One of the best weddings I’ve ever been to was a Jewish/Pagan wedding held outside on a fine summer day in Sunnybrook Park, Toronto (friend of old girlfried). Sixty or so people, and the Happy Couple joined hands and jumped over the fire.
There aren’t a lot of people left in my family who would witness my wedding: my father is in a nursing home, there’re two aunts, several cousins, my sister and brother-in-law, and certain old friends. Maybe twenty tops. As a result, if I ever get married, I expect that it would be a small wedding: my hypothetical fiancée could bring quite a few people and it would still be a “small” wedding. (Of course, saying that has probably increased my chance of marrying into some vast, chaotic Indian or Italian family…)
We had a JP do a house call, and the witnesses were the cats. On our six-month anniversary we had a party, invited a bunch of friends, and celebrated it. We actually intend to revow at some point – the marriage was conducted in our old house, we don’t live there anymore, so we should re-pledge where we do live, is the logic. We’re not that organised, yet. Maybe by spring, so I can plant an apple tree for it.
If I ever marry my boyfriend, I suspect I’d like to do something as a more public ritual, since we can’t do a legally binding ceremony. That would depend a great deal on him, though, and he’s very much in a “waugh, don’t ask me for commitments like that” state of mind, so it’s no good fantasising much. :}
We had known basically from the time we got together that we were going to wind up getting married, but we weren’t officially engaged until we inadvertently stumbled across this wedding chapel* near Cambria, California while on vacation. As soon as we walked in there, we knew it was where we wanted to get married, and that was that.
In a matter of four short months after the day we discovered it, we managed to round up about 45 folks to meet us up there despite it being a solid four-hour drive from LA. This was the perfect size for us. We went pretty non-traditional with a STRONG emphasis on the affair being casual – something that suited both of our personalities well. She wore a dress that she and her mom made, and I wore some slacks and a nice shirt and vest that I picked up from Nordstrom’s. Both the bridesmaid (who was VERY pregnant at the time) and my best man were looking nice but quite casual, and most of our guests (except our parents) came dressed casually, as we’d asked. It’s funny how difficult it can be to convince people that you really mean it when you say that, but most of our friends knew us well enough to take us seriously.
Anyway, the ceremony lasted about 5 minutes (again, suiting our personalities – less about the ceremony and more about the celebrating with friends and family), and then we headed back to the large house we’d rented in Cambria to enjoy good food catered by the barbecue place in town. Instead of cake, we went with peach cobbler (my favorite dessert), but we never got to have any of it because there was a power outage in town and we had no way to heat it up! But everyone had a great time, and the cost of everything was under $2,000 if I remember correctly (this was in 1999).
Cliche though it may be, if we were to do it all over again, I wouldn’t change a thing.
*I linked to the archive of the website because the wedding chapel is now closed, as is most of the town of Harmony, California. If anyone has $1.8 million lying around just collecting dust, I would be most appreciative if you’d buy up the town and restore it’s operations for nostalgia’s sake. Thanks!
We did Vegas, too. We got in under half of what you paid (probably with half the fun) but it was great and we have no regrets. It was just the two of us. Loved it!
Razorette and I got married in the local Catholic church, and while we have wonderful memories of the DAY, the time leading up to the DAY was an absolute horror. The reason is that the bride’s mother, being a Catholic farmwife and mother, was in a club we didn’t know about – the “My Daughter’s Wedding Will Be As Good As Your Daughter’s Or Better” club. What we didn’t realize was that the other club members, all of whom expected to attend, would judge every facet of the wedding, Communion, reception, feast and dance. Plus, the wedding was a way in which my mother-in-law signalled to the community who was and wasn’t on her list of favorite people (or at least on her list of people she didn’t want to piss off because they would talk badly about her around town.) Mother-in-law-to-be informed bride-to-be that she would have a Catholic wedding, in a Catholic church, it would be done by the numbers and it would be followed by an Italian style wedding dance and outdoor feast on the farm.
Unfortunately for her, I was a pretty bad asshole (I’ve gotten much better at it since then) and I was not Catholic. Besides, while my Methodist family was of modest means, we did have standards, and in our world weddings and receptions were followed by sit-down dinners at which the appropriate toasts are rendered at the appropriate times by the appropriate people. In order that my family would not be utterly alienated, I insisted that:
A Methodist minister would co-officiate (unheard of at the time; it was a first in that church.) No minister, no wedding.
There would be no communion. My family didn’t receive communion in the Methodist Church, and it made the ceremony overly long.
No dance. I’d heard about those farm family wedding dances, and wanted no part of it. Two of my wife’s brothers already had reputations for trashing wedding dances.
The bride and I wouldn’t attend the “feast.” If the farm folks wanted to eat sausage and meatballs out on the farm afterward, fine, but my people would not be attending, and my bride and I would be enroute to our honeymoon in Aspen shortly after the reception.
The mother did bully the bride into inviting a list of people we didn’t even know, but whom the mother couldn’t “afford to offend,” whatever the hell that meant.
The day went off without a hitch, but for years my mother-in-law grumbled about the non-Catholic, non-Italian nature of the whole thing. I recently found out my wife was terribly disappointed that there was no dance (there was one at each of her sisters’ weddings, and they were both trashed by her brothers.) So this summer, when we celebrate our 35th anniversary, I will throw a country-style feast and wedding dance for her. One of the brothers is a Mormon and the other one is a recovering alcoholic, so it should be fairly calm.