Oh, yes, I forgot about the wrangler. Or as I prefer to call her, the Wedding Nazi. Every remotely formal wedding needs a Nazi. Someone to keep the groomsmen (for some reason at every wedding I’ve ever been to, it’s always the groomsmen) from figuring they’re not in this picture, so they can go pee or smoke or whatever. And when they’re needed for the next picture, someone else figures it’s taking long enough to find the first one that they have time to nip out to do whatever, and so on down the line. You need someone to crack the whip and keep the buggers in line.
Yes. I’m not a big drinker so it’s not that I’d be looking to get plastered on your dime, but it’s a party. It’s supposed to be free to me.
Congrats!
My SIL had a potato martini bar at her wedding last year - big pot of mashed potatoes, martini glasses, and all kinds of fixings from bacon bits to ham to cheese and sour cream and chives. It was a huge hit. (Could help that we’re all of Scotch-German ancestry and love potatoes. YMMV.) It was a lot of fun, it was cheap, and it was different from any other wedding I’d been to.
It was the first time that the reception site had done the potato martini bar and they ran out of mashed potatoes and had to make more in the middle of the event. They hadn’t anticipated how much of a hit it would be. (Or the fact that we all really love potatoes.)
We didn’t have any help paying for our wedding, and were young so didn’t really have anything saved. So we applied for a couple of credit cards and charged 'em up.
Every day we regret it.
Oh, and another big vote yea on doing buffet/station versus set plates. You can get much more variety in the food, and you don’t end up with some people getting way more food than they want while some get much less.
A good ceremony is usually a short ceremony. Your guests would rather get to the fun part (AKA the reception) as soon as they can. Keep the ceremony as short as your tradition will allow. Don’t add a lot of readings, songs, interpretive dances, etc, to the basic ceremony (a few is OK, a lot is not), and if you write your own vows, keep them short. If you want a lot of extra stuff, do it at the reception. People are happier to sit through that kind of thing when they’ve got some food and drinks. This goes double if you’ve got kids in the wedding party or on the guest list.
If you’re like most people now, you’ll probably have people at your ceremony who have different opinions from yours on matters of religion. This is a time for trying to get along with them, not for showing them the error of their ways or trying to convert them. Try to keep your officiant from doing anything like an altar call or giving a sermon/homily that would be likely to offend or upset some people. If your officiant refuses to do this, consider a different officiant. Likewise, any readings or songs that you select should be something that is not at all likely to be controversial among the people you’ve invited.
Does Communion count? 
Hm, my fiancé’s mother is already offended that we’re not having a Catholic wedding with a priest presiding, so I’m afraid we’ve already failed at that. But then, she rolled her eyes when my fiancé’s cousin and his wife were married in an Episocopal (I think) church by a gasp woman minister, so we’re really not too worried about trying to satisfy her. 
Oh, speaking of which–if you have a religious service, make sure to put something short and noticeable in the program to explain to people what parts people from outside your denomination should and shouldn’t participate in. (For instance, at a wedding that includes a Catholic Mass, non-Catholics shoudln’t go up for Communion.)
You’ll inevitably offend somebody with at least one of the choices you make at your wedding. That’s a given. But you don’t want to have your officiant, say, give a speech about how terrible the Catholic Church is, especially if you know there will be Catholics there. Even if you really do think the Catholic Church is terrible and all Catholics are going to hell, your wedding isn’t the time or place to say that.
I just have to tell you that after seeing your username in connection with this thread, all I can picture when I read your posts is a pair of human cannonballs concluding their wedding ceremony by being, um, Shot From Guns. A guy in a tux and a lady in a wedding dress flying through the air… best wedding ceremony ever!
The bulk of money you spend on a wedding is not spent on the THINGS, it’s spent on the services of people. Therefore, the easiest way to save money is find ways to do things yourself or enlist the help of family/friends as you mentioned.
For example, as long as you don’t want any rare or out-of-season flowers, go to a flower market, or similar place and pick out all the flowers you want. It’s not that hard to gather them into attractice-looking bouquets and wrap ribbons around them. Or drop them into simple, pretty vases as decoration.
If you or anyone you are close to are craft-y, doing all the stationery things yourself can save huge money. With a little creativity (and a fair amount of work) they can look just as nice and professional as anything you could have professionally printed.
I am going to attempt to keep this in mind for if I ever get married. Full of win.
Congrats! My wedding is in 17 days, so I’m well into minor freak out mode. (Did you know that if you have your car in reverse it won’t start? The guy from AAA did! Crisis averted!)
Ours is going to be about $3000 for a backyard, 100 people, non-traditional ceremony, BBQ type reception. Planning is going well, but I worry we won’t have enough food. Then I tell myself that we will, that it will be fun, and dammit just relax.
So take it from me, just relax. It’s probably going to be fine.
(I might be the wrong person to offer advice. Maybe in 18 days…)
My wife’s Grandfather had long resigned himself to the fact that his Granddaughter was an Episcopalian, but I don’t think anything could have prepared him for female, Baptist Minister who married us.
Oh - a great reception idea. Put disposable cameras on the tables. My Uncle’s partner requisitioned most of them, and his pictures were fantastic. People really do act differently around a table mate with a camera than they do when the wedding photographer comes around.
Oo, nice idea! I have a friend from college who was a photo major whom I’d like to be our wedding photographer, but I also want her to be able to enjoy herself at the reception. Maybe we’ll ask her to take the “offical” wedding photos before and during the ceremony, and then leave most of the reception photos to the guests.
These days, almost everyone has a digital camera (either a small point-and-shoot or a mobile phone with a camera), and they will often bring their camera to a wedding and use it. You could request those taking pictures either to email their best shots to you, or to upload them to a site like Flickr (where you could set up a group so that all the pictures could be shared there).
You could also buy a bunch of disposable cameras to leave on the tables (one per table) at the reception for the guests to take photos, which you (or, better yet, a designated Helpful Person) can collect at the end of the evening. You get all sorts of surprising pictures that way, especially as the alcohol consumption goes up.
The disposable camera idea seems like a good idea, but in the end you’re going to spend a lot of money developing some really bad photos. Crappy lenses, drunken operators, expensive to develop.
I’d go with getting everyone to send you their best shots from their digital cameras, skip the crappy one altogether.
It cost me $2.99 to have pix from a disposable camera put on a photo CD. That way you can upload the ones you want and not spent on prints you don’t want.