Tell me about your wedding ceremony

My first wife was Cajun and grew up dreaming of getting married at the Nottoway Plantation. It’s very historic and is typically booked solid going out about a year. One day, she came to me and said “somebody has cancelled their late May reservation” and so we grabbed it.

Somewhere, there’s a groom that’s smarter than me who realized that he was about to replace every Indy 500 weekend for the rest of his life with anniversary celebrations.

Please don’t judge me…what choice did I have but to toss that marriage faster than Big Al Unser tosses a wrench when one of his drivers screws up.

My second wife and I were married in a surprise wedding. We announce our engagement but told everyone we were having a small private ceremony and a reception later at our favorite Pub. We had a big spread of food, Pub was closed down for the event and we invited about 200 people for an open bar event. We arrived to the reception and began enjoying ourselves with all of our guest. About an hour into the gala the band stopped and my wife and I went to the stage where I announced that we had decided that we couldn't get married. Couldn't get married that is without all of our friends present. With that a minister friend came to the stage with us. Her three children walk the aisle up to the stage as the band play The Wedding March. Everyone was confused. The minister friend began the ceremony in the middle of the reception. Freaked everyone out that we surprise them with our wedding. Everybody told us it was the best wedding they ever been to. Once the ceremony was over, about 10 or 15 minutes, we partied well into the wee hours of the morning.

I had hired a photographer from the local newspaper to shoot candid shots of the event. When the newspaper got wind of what we were doing they sent a reporter and did a full page spread in the Sunday newspaper the next day. Also a TV crew got wind of it and came out and filmed much of it and we got a story on the local weekend news. People still talk about all the free press we got. LOL

In reply to RevRico :

I was married Aug 11 this year.  I have no pictures!! Had a photographer but haven’t got them yet. 

Anyway it was by the lake I love. Outdoors. At a very prestigious country club.  And it only cost $300 !  

Well, for use of the site. Heck we paid our minister and his accompanist wife $500 

We tried to get it down to 20 minutes, sorry I didn’t use a stop watch but wanted it short.  Well because I’m old. ( 70 ) and she’s no spring chicken either.  It was warm, in the 80’s and her 85 year old mother was there as well as several older friends and guests. 

We had our grandchildren all be part of it from 2 to 12, we gave them all the dresses ( and one small suit ) and had them up there with us we didn’t care if they walked ran skipped or did cartwheels  just as long as they felt important  

 My best friend as best man and her sister as matron of honor. Most of the rest of our family were listed as special or honored guests  

I spoke from the heart for a minute or two as did my wife. Then we said traditional vows kisses and said let the party begin.  

Fancy and great tasting meal  then left to my  house on the same lake where we went swimming, boating floating on a giant pink inflatable swan, and a few went fishing.  

The candy cart was one of the great attractions.  Got rare old style candy, weird foreign candy, funny candy like cow pies, wax lips, gum cigarettes, Neccos,  stuff I didn’t know they still made but was really well received.

Total costs was under $10,000 and that included a pink flamingo that was 10 foot tall and had as many as 14 on it at one time. 

Toyman reminded me that he asked me to pop in here. I'm going to send you a message so that we can go through email. I've got 5 base religious ceremonies and suggestions on ways to personalize it for couples. I've been doing this for 12 years and like he says... I do a lot of them.

At the county courthouse April 15, 1977. Yes we're both old now. My best friend from forever & her best friend were witnesses with their spouses. Judge was delayed, wife freaked, had to be talked into not running away. Ceremony over we climbed into my baby E36 M3 brown 1954 Ford pickup & drove to the Eastern Shore for a long weekend. Good times.

First wedding was the traditional spiel at the now-thankfully-ex-wife's college's chapel. Pretty much textbook wedding other than her being like 30 minutes late to it and getting sick during the reception and spending half of it in the bathroom (and no, thank GOD it wasn't because she was pregnant). Barely remember much of the reception, neither of us got to each much of anything much less the cake (I love cake- a lot...).

Cue roughly 13 years later when the Dancer and I get married. Met up at the courthouse with a handful of our closer friends (eastsideTim was there as the witness for my side, was also in the first wedding) and were married by a judge there. Went on a Caribbean cruise for our 'honeymoon' and exchanged vows on a beautiful beach- that day s what we officially consider our anniversary even though legally it was about a week earlier. A few months later we threw a large party at one of our favorite restaurants that all of our families and friends came to that served as the reception- we had a great time and could really enjoy the people and the food without all of the stress of the traditional wedding trappings. Only real nod to a normal reception was having a few friends give speeches and having our first dance (I think we confused a few people slow-dancing to 'Still Into You'...). Wouldn't do anything differently if we had it to do again.

We had a mutual friend do the ceremony, it was not secular nor really religious either. We (mostly my wife) wrote the ceremony. On Edisto beach with 50-60 of our closest friends and relatives. Maybe 20 mins total, had the reception at the house I rented for our Honeymoon. The Groom, officiant and most of the groomsmen wore kilts. The wife wore white and Bride  maid, Maid and Matron of Honor wore simple Blue dresses. (the color accentuated the Tartan of the kilts. :-)  ) Only recall the first words that were said, that I wanted to be there, that we said I do, and that she looked amazing. The rest is details.  My wife did conceed to letting the first words be from the Princess bride wedding speech ... with the lisp... still not sure how she went for that.

My three weddings were so long ago I forget.   First one was by a minister, the other two by someone who had the authority.  All low key since all three had been married before.

 Doubt I will do it again.

I almost forgot, the minister was the janitor from my mom's school.

I got about 60 people over to my house the day before. We fed them tacos and drinks and had a huge party. A great time was had by all. The next day I sent some helpers over to the plot of land under a 200 year old tree we had reserved at the rose garden to set up the chairs. Our officiant struggled all morning getting ordained via various web services and was victorious about 35 minutes before deadline. He was a litigator and very comfortable speaking for large groups. He was amazing. We arrived about 5 minutes before the set time with our dogs. He said some opening words. The soon to be missus and I busted out some guitars and did a fun acoustic rendition of "Love Song" by the Damned.  We set the guitars down and the officiant said a few more things. I had him slip in the "dearly beloved" bit from Prince's "Let's go Crazy" as a nod to Bianca's love of Prince.

I refused to write my own vows as I find them disconcerting. Bianca said she would handle it and I didn't give it any further thought so I was genuinely surprised when he turned to me and said "Trent, do you promise Bianca to do stuff, and things and keep your cool when E36 M3 goes down?"  I think my response was "hell yes I do!"

We smooched, people cheered. They all ate some bite sized pumpkin pies (because my frikkin wedding and I don't care for cake) and everyone went home since we had celebrated it the night before.

A bit of cleanup and I put away the seats and it was over in about an hour. It was a truly perfect day.

Yes!  An excuse to post my favorite photo from my wedding day:

We went traditional and no regrets other than my Magnum PI mustache.  Not much to say other than my wife is a good sport and my best friend.

In reply to Apis Mellifera :

Damn is that a beautiful getaway car. 

Immediate families flew to St. Thomas for an extended weekend.  Got married at a beautiful garden overlooking the ocean.  Had a blast in the Caribbean -sail boat cruise, dinners overlooking the harbor, beaches and drinks.  They flew home Monday we stayed for another week.  Highly recommended!

I say great thread! This allows us to know a bit more about each other, which can only make this forum greater.

My brother had a huge, very formal (and very expensive) wedding, inviting an ape-load of people. He told me 6months later we wished he would have made it more about them, with much less people.

We did the opposite. We had a small wedding in our own yard. A big party tent,  a huge ice chest with drinks and my 2 brothers running one big gas grill each to take care of the hot part of the dinner. We invited about 60 people. We cared zero about “what will aunt Eva say if she won’t get an invitation?”. Well, Aunt Eva is berkeleying boring, while aunt Ann is awesome; deal with it. We invited a lot of friends and everyone brought their kids and dogs. It was a party!

We had a laptop set up with Skype running and friends from several countries we lived in “joined”.

A state official came and held the actually ceremony. It was a 15min deal and then he had a glass of champagne with us and left. 

I had a pretty traditional Presbyterian wedding.  Complete with an organist who played so slowly it was embarrassing.  I think ours lasted 45 minutes, mostly because we both had so many pastors in our families that we invited them all to read scriptures.

I officiated one.  They wanted it outside in February.  I kept it light with a short homily, involved the guests as part of their vows, and then the reception was at Salt Lick BBQ.

Their marriage lasted almost 2 months. :)

We went traditional. Her being catholic and my “baptist”/non-denominational we used the middle ground of Episcopal. The guest list was around 150 and it was a 5 figure, open bar reception because my M-I-L has to impress her NYC/OC relatives(my relatives came from rural PA trailer parks, nice mix) It is still the fanciest wedding I’ve ever been to. I was a catatonic mess for my last 24 hours and I almost passed out during the ceremony. 

IF I ever do it again, it will be small, casual, and affordable. But still being married has that at a very low probability any time soon. 

Brian said:

We went traditional. Her being catholic and my “baptist”/non-denominational we used the middle ground of Episcopal. The guest list was around 150 and it was a 5 figure, open bar reception because my M-I-L has to impress her NYC/OC relatives(my relatives came from rural PA trailer parks, nice mix) It is still the fanciest wedding I’ve ever been to. I was a catatonic mess for my last 24 hours and I almost passed out during the ceremony. 

IF I ever do it again, it will be small, casual, and affordable. But still being married has that at a very low probability any time soon. 

 

My MIL had to impress everyone too. All these things that you “have to have”. 

I could have done it with the same guest list (about 200) for about $4k, but apparently a County fairground/American legion/church gymnasium/whatever wasn’t nice enough. 

Wife and I got married at Lime Rock. We were really into track days and autocrossing at the time, and the club we ran with had rented LRP for a track day.  Once the cars were off the track for the day, we got married under the tower. We wanted to do on the start/finish line, but it was WAY too hot in a Tux and wedding dress.  Short simple ceremony, which is what we wanted. We had about 40 family members and pretty much everyone that ran the track day watching us.  We had a chicken BBQ after.  It was unusual, a Thursday afternoon,  and everything happened fairly quickly, but it was really where we were in our lives at the time.  It's going to be 18 years next week, so it wasnt all bad. Our personal outlay for everything was less than $500.  Worked out to be a great deal too. AND, it was the wife's idea!

We did have a normal reception on Sunday.

We tell people that we got married at a race track, and all they can think of is redneck roundy round stuff.  Then we show them the pictures, rolling hills, trees, all the amazing cenery around Lime Rock.   Then we show them the ones with the track cars in it.  They cant belive its a race track.

Timely that this thread got brought back up.

To everyone's surprise, including me, it's my turn this August. Friday the 13th.

We're doing this "Quaker style" according to the ridiculous rules of PA. That means no ceremony, just gotta snag some people to sign the certificate during the party.

We're having a pig roast in the yard, whole hog stuffed with kielbasa, smoked mac n cheese, slaw, buns. EXTREMELY informal, guests will be turned away if they show up in suits. I was denied my request for a live Irish punk band, in large part because we couldn't find one local. 

We are doing cheesecake cupcakes in lieu of a wedding cake, and some regular cupcakes for the heathens who don't like cheesecake. 

And as typical for me, y'all are invited if your going to be in the area or passing through, even your tykes are welcome. 

Total cost should be about a challenge car for everything, food, clothes, table setups, etc. 

Oh, and I guess to follow up on why this thread was started.

Mike n Susan got hitched may 2019. They're still together, and they were happy his dad got to see the ceremony. I got Mike's mom to cry during the ceremony, and even for her uber catholicness she was happy with how everything went.

I started with about 15 minutes if stuff to say and we finished in about 9 minutes counting the wine blending ceremony the vineyard they married at put together.

Then at the end of the night, I signed the certificate in the wrong spot. Luckily, I guess, it's the one they kept for themselves not the one they gave to the state, so that will be a fun reminder for them in the future. 

Since I said years ago I'd let everyone know how mine was....

We got married in a Victorian mansion in Spokane, not a huge one but perfect for what we wanted. It had 4 rooms available for the people flying in. Our wedding party came from 3 countries ( Australia, Canada and the US) and 3 states ( Washington, Idaho and North Carolina). We had about 50 guests total. My dad was my best man. 

We had everyone line the rooms so when the wedding  party walked down the aisle they walked thru family and friends that became family. The song that played while we got ready for this was Mountains of Mars by Electric Wizard. My wife walked down the aisle and the long staircase going to it to this :

The Song

If you don't see the title almost no one knows what song that is and it's a beautiful rendition of it. Many cry when they hear it. For fun, play it for someone without telling them the title.

She wanted us the write our vows and hers were great. Mine were great as well IMO and I got to add the " love, honor and never, ever obey" to mine. Many laughs. I threatened to have my groomsman scuttle like Zoidburg up and down the aisle. I think it would have been hilarious but cooler more sane heads prevailed even though my groomsman were totally down with it.

For our unity ceremony we did a plaster cast of our hands together with our rings on. The officiant cried, the bridesmaids cried, my dog cried( who was our rings bearer)apparently my idea went over well.

We danced to At Last for our first dance and had dinner of steak and chicken catered by a local butcher shop. One of my groomsman made our cake.

Afterwards our band played, the only gig so far for Interstellar Sledgehammer actually thru all the hardships and pandemic.

We took many pictures including the one that is hanging on my wall now in canvas form, all of us running from a T-Rex. It's berkeleying awesome.

It wasn't terribly expensive, it was totally us and it was amazing

- Told the guy behind the counter we were getting married, he told us to wait over there.

- Same guy showed up in a silly rob a few minutes later and took us behind the counter and said some things.

(I have heard there was a study that showed the longevity of a marriage is inversely proportional to how much is spent on the wedding)

Ours was just immediate family in our backyard along with two friends of mine. Total of less than 20 people. Brisket and pork tenderloin on the smoker meant the whole thing smelled wonderful. We had the pictures taken pre-ceremony because that big pause after the wedding for photos is annoying. Officiant was a friend.

The only thing we spent real money on was a pro photographer. He and an assistant spent the day shooting both the standard photos and a bunch of candid shots. They said they had more fun at our wedding than they'd ever had. We got the rights to the pictures so we could make our own photo book. No regrets there, because at the end of the day the only thing left over is the photos and each other.

It's lasted 14 years so far.

Got married at our church. 50 people at ceremony. Not even hour ceremony. Reception at local fire hall. Cost was a couple hundred bucks. Everybody brought food or beverages potluck style and it was a big indoor picnic. All in cost was less than $1k. Will be married 9 years in December.