I got in engaged in November and in December moved in with my fiance. We’re procrastinators when it comes to just about everything besides putting together Lego sets and watching Archer, so we’re just in the most basic stages of wedding planning. We’ve definitely hit on the hardest question to answer: where should we have our wedding? And it’s not even to the easier question of church wedding versus backyard wedding versus event space versus whatever. We’re still stuck on “which state?” He’s from Missouri, I’m from Washington. We live in Washington, but most of his family doesn’t. I know the traditional for heterosexual weddings is bride’s hometown, which would be much easier on my family (which has a lot of farmers who can’t be away from the cattle and pigs too long or people in too bad a physical shape to fly), but I do feel bad that his parents, sister’s family, and godmother would then all be stuck flying 5 hours or more, with other aunts and uncles flying an hour or two at least, to see us tie the knot if we did it that way
So, married Dopers (plus people who had big love shindigs like handfastings or civil unions), which location did you settle on?
Bangkok. First, we legally registered at Pathum Wan district office, making us legally married from that moment in the eyes of the law. However, what the law says and society considers are not necessarily the same here, and the wife’s friends and family did not consider us maried until her mother performed a traditional Chinese ceremony herself (the family is ethnic Chinese) about 2-1/2 months later. We couldn’t even live together after our registration, and the (future) wife was in her 30s! We consider the ceremony our anniversary date but use the registration date for US visas and stuff.
In a park on a lake, in the hometown we grew up in. With a horse-drawn Cinderella carriage to take us to the reception.
The divorce was in a courthouse.
Our families are from next-door states and the ones closely related to us still live in those states, so there wasn’t much teeth-gnashing about it. We were married in a lovely air-conditioned park shelter on a lake about 20 miles outside the town we live in, while it poured buckets of rain all day.
We were from different states & got married in my area as “Lon Gisland” is just too damned expensive. Is there material difference in costs between the two states? If he’s from St. Louis vs. rural part of the state, that might be a factor to consider.
To explain, he was living in STL at the time and I was getting ready to relocate there. Seemed like a good place! He is from SC and I’m from NY, so neither of those places would’ve been convienant.
We had our wedding in a community hall in Calgary, where we both live. We had our reception in the same hall (with pictures taken there as well). We had a very small wedding, but from the planning of that, I’d say think long and hard before you start planning a wedding in a place where you don’t live. It’s tough enough looking after a billion details when they’re just down the street from you.
Our wedding was in my mother’s back yard with my dad (mom’s ex) as my best man, and my uncle officiating. If I remember correctly, we had 55 people there.
He’s from Cape Girardeau, although most of his family is from Idaho and that’s something we’re considering- the parents and siblings would still have to travel a damn long way on both sides, but his very elderly grandfather would not.
I think having a backyard or a garden wedding is great. The natural surrounding will help you feel more relaxed and calm. You can as well decide for what set-up you want it yo be. Be creative in any way that you can. And in deciding for where to have it better talk it out with your husband to be. Which place would be convenient to both of you.
If you then decide on a garden wedding try having it with a gazebo. It adds to the romantic ambiance as what I usually witness in garden and backyard weddings.
Norris Bookkeeping and Accounting in Green Cove Springs, Florida, in front of a notary, with a couple of the office workers signing as witnesses. It wasn’t so much a wedding as a lunchtime elopement.