First wedding in a town hall on four days notice - my stepfather took everybody out to dinner afterwards. Lasted 17 years.
First divorce I went to a very nice lawyer, told him what we wanted, he drew up a separation agreement, husband signed it, I flew to Santo Domingo one evening, got divorced in judge’s chamber next morning (10 minutes tops). Whole divorce took 2 weeks total from the day I walked into the lawyer’s office.
Second wedding we flew to Las Vegas the day after my divorce, went to town hall to get license (again, 10 minutes tops), looked in yellow pages, picked a wedding chapel, got picked up by the chapel limo and married 45 minutes later. We had a romantic dinner for two after. Eight years and counting so far.
I have never understood why people go to all the expense and aggravation of a big wedding. And don’t even get me started on the way most people go about getting a divorce.
Pepper Mill and I had a pretty low-budge wedding, but it was far beyond the prices cited above. A couple of friends got married on shoestrings, though:
1.) One set got married at our college, i the college chapel. They had the reception in the Student Center, catered by the campus Food Service. Music was by the Bride’s stereo system. Decrations were the Brides flower pots, done up in colored foil for the occasion. There wasn’t any budget for a honeymoon – they planned on goin to the bride’s dorm room. But it was summer, and hot and muggy, so we all chipped in to get them a room in the air-conditioned Howard Johnson’s.
2.) Anther frend got married at City Hall in Brooklyn, with the recption at a restaurant down the street. He was a committed atheist, but I stoill thin he could have done better. Brooklyn’s City Hall chapel is one of the least romantic places to get married. The chairs in the waiting room all had grafitti on them.
And the JP still insisted on working a reference to God into the ceremony. The Groom hated that.
I definitely won’t win for least money spent, but I may win in the “quickest and most unusual” category.
We had been living together for 3 years, engaged for one year, moved twice and bought a house.
We decided 10 days before the wedding (Dec. 21st) that we’d get married before the end of the year and booked tickets to Vegas.
Told all the parents at Christmas. His Mom and I went shopping for a dress at Jacobsen’s and I wore the first one she picked out. In and out of the mall in 45 minutes.
Flew to Vegas and hired the Limo driver that took us to the hotel for the whole next day.
Next day, went to get the license, buy a ring for him, shoes for me. They dropped me off at the hotel and the limo driver toook him to strip joints and made dinner reservations while I got ready.
He picked me up and changed into his tux (already owned).
We had the 8:04 to 8:08 slot at The Silver Bell Wedding Chapel (over 200,000 happy couples served) where our limo driver functioned as photographer (with OUR camera), ring bearer and witness. I refused to walk down the aisle and walked in the side door where I waited at the “alter” for him.
Dinner.
More strip joints.
Ringing in the new year.
Getting food poisoning.
Four and a half happy years and a beautiful kid later.
Mrs. Rastahomie and I had a very beautiful and very relaxed wedding for about $2000. Most of the money we saved we saved because of our connections.
Mrs. Rastahomie’s grandma knew a bunch of little old ladies who were glad to have something to do, one of whom made beautiful flower arrangements for us at cost. Another was a retired seamstress who made the dress at cost.
The church was the same one Mrs. Rastahomie had attended from the time she was a little girl until the time she left for college, so there was no charge for the church and the minister asked that his honorarium ($50) be put into the collection plate.
We had the reception at Viburnum, Missouri’s one-and-only golf course, whose clubhouse has a very nice banquet area. We (well, my parents) paid full price for the food, but we economized and the whole package wound up costing around $500. Mrs. Rastahomie’s brother is The Boss at a radio station, and he made one of his DJ’s work overtime to DJ our reception.
All in all, a very beautiful wedding, on the cheap :D.
Thanks for the ideas. We’re getting married later this summer or in fall, I think. No plans yet, parents don’t even know about it. I think I’ll just invite a few friends, and tell the 'rents later that week. You don’t want my family at one of these, trust me. $5,000-$10,000 for a wedding? No, she wants to go back to school, and that’s $10,000/yr.
We didn’t set a date, just figured we would know when it was time. About 8 months later, we learned that some friends would be driving through Reno a week later, so we scheduled it for that morning at a chapel there. Drove into town, spent the money for the chapel, the license, one night in a hotel, and gas to and from Reno (from San Francisco).
Our reception was the breakfast buffet at the Atlantis, our friends paid for it (for all five of us).
I don’t think it gets much lower maintenance than that.
We got married by the JOP at our town courthouse ($25 for license, I belive). I had on a $30 clearance dress from Penny’s (very nice, belive it or not) and Allan wore a suit he already owned. We had breakfast afterwards (the owners bought it for us), then we had a reception with about 30 people at a local pub. Food/drinks came to about $300, we provided our own music and such, and paid $30 for a cake. Our honeymoon was a gift, so that was free, and we got about $1000 in gifts, which means we profited around $700.
We are happily married and I would not have had it any other way!
My parents had a low-budget…erm…“wedding”. Judge of Peace was a friend of theirs, he married them at his house, with other friends present, and the reception was also there. I think the mostly costly thing in all where the wedding bands, but seeing as they are only gold rings, they couldn’t be too expensive. No honeymoon, as I was either on the way or already there, my parents have never told me, and I don’t ask.
My parents were married in Reno. It will be 42 years this July. Must be something about the place. My Pops was introduced to his mother-in-law as my Mom’s husband. That must have been weird. My parents only knew each other for about a month before they were married.
So the quick and cheap weddings run in our family. The Missus and I knew each other much longer beforehand, but the actual engagement was less than 48 hours. (Wednesday after a friend’s party - Me: Hey, you wanna get married? Her: okay. Me: how about Friday, I can take the day off. Her: Sure, then we can celebrate this weekend…)
Not my wedding, but my best friend from high school got married six years ago to the mother of his child and did some of the tackiest shit I’ve ever seen. It was also a tad eclectic, since I was the best man, resplendent in tuxedo and all. The pictures are pretty kick-ass, if I do say so myself.
The minister said later he would have refused to perform the ceremony had he known the best man was a woman. The wedding party got drunk by passing around bottles of cheap whiskey chased with cheap schnapps with all of our high school buddies in the parking lot of the church before the ceremony. The reception was at the VFW with horrid paper decorations from Wal-Mart and food made by the grammas. We drank keg beer and danced to hits from high school, none of which we even liked at the time. The groom’s mother opened the bathroom door to pee and out tumbled fifteen people of both sexes smoking pot in the toilet. The bride got so shitty she “mistakenly” almost went home with the groom’s brother. The bachelor party I threw consisted of a keg, assorted whatever-else-everyone-brought and a bonfire in the middle of a field. I couldn’t even get EXPENSIVE strippers to come out to the middle of BFE.
Tacky or no, it was the best time I’ve ever had at a wedding, and they have three kids total now and are still going strong.
My parent’s second wedding (they were divorced for a few years, but ti didn’t take) was pretty low key. We held it in my uncle’s backyard, formal dress but not black tie, went to a nice Italian place for the reception. Aside from the Justice of the Peace, everyone there was close family (My mom’s brother and two sisters, one of my dad’s brothers, and a few miscellanious nieces)
The really cool part was that, since there were so few people there, I got to both give my mom away and be my dad’s best man.
