Wedding plans. aaarrrggghhhh!

SWMBO has decided she’s tired of living in sin and wants the paperwork. 

No,  no courthouse wedding

If I had it to do again, I'd have saved the money and gone to the courthouse.

The wedding is for the woman. It speaks to a princess fantasy like Cinderella they got from Disney when they were children. Most guys don't give a flip. Ours was nice and everyone had fun but if I had been the one footing the bill it wouldn't have happened.

I also no longer believe in the idea of "SWMBO" as a healthy dynamic for a marriage.

In reply to ddavidv :

That’s all I can hope for.  That everyone has fun. 

I know my role, I’ve done this before ( as has she) Keep my mouth shut (except for the 4 words) smile and nod.  I’ve endured worse.  

Think of racing.  

ddavidv said:

I also no longer believe in the idea of "SWMBO" as a healthy dynamic for a marriage.

<-- This.  The first time I told Mrs. VCH about this term, she looked aghast.  

I've never used it since.  

We got hitched up about 6 years ago.  Did it at a vineyard/ winery, under a tent, about 100 close friends and family, and a live band (we were friends with the drummer).  No cake- we had pies (we hate cake).  No hard liquor either, just wine and beer.  There was a bonfire and moonshine (OK, so there was some hard liquor...) being passed around.   It was a helluva time.  I think the total cost- rental of the vineyard, the tent, all the food, booze, music, etc was around $10k.  

I'm not telling you this is the ideal wedding.  It was ideal for _us_.  Don't waste your time on a cookie-cutter wedding, do like Frank Sinatra (My Way).  Make the focus on having fun and less about being/ getting married.  

A friend of mine once described LeMons racing as a big weekend party where a race just happens to also take place.  Make your wedding the same thing.  

Oh, and Congratulations!

I did courthouse the first time. Swmbo 2.0 is torn between paperwork and a real wedding, since ex swmbo was a berkeleying scumbag and barely acknowledged their original courthouse deal. I'm staying out of it. 

We did similar to VCH- friend's farm (free), tent/tables/etc all rented, 60ish people, DJ was a friend (free), catered by other friends (discount), beer and wine.  It was a great time and I don't think I would change anything about it, total end cost was in the $5k neighborhood.

Anyone can be an officiant, any place big enough can be a venue, do something you enjoy and invite people you like rather than falling into the "they have to be on the list" and "but cousin doofus had it at a country club" traps.

I'm available, and legally allowed, to officiate. Just saying. 

Vegas, drive through, get married in a running car. I did it and it's worked great. 

Mine was quite the show. Beautiful old church, open bar reception costing around $10k for about 150 people. 

Never. Again. 

In reply to volvoclearinghouse :

I’m afraid not.  I thought the least I could do was select transportation.  

Let’s take the MGTD?  No! Too windy ruin my hair! 

Yes Dear 

How about the Jaguar?  I’ll polish it up and it will be nice and elegant for the country club. No! Too low I’ll have trouble getting out of it.

Yes Dear

What  about the cabin cruiser, big and roomy, you can go below to get out of any breeze.  There is a head     (bathroom) galley and 2 rooms to lay down in. They’ve got docks we can use and It will fit right in with the country club set. 

No!  I’ll have to lift my leg to step over the transom. 

Yes Dear

I suggested a limo.  No I don’t want to be pretentious 

Yes Dear 

I know my pickup is a no. Which leaves her  5 year old Honda CRV 

Yes Dear!  

We will probably be having ours at a state park. Great scenery, lots of room, and we both live hiking and the outdoors. It's us. 

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ said:

We did similar to VCH- friend's farm (free), tent/tables/etc all rented, 60ish people, DJ was a friend (free), catered by other friends (discount), beer and wine.  It was a great time and I don't think I would change anything about it, total end cost was in the $5k neighborhood.

Anyone can be an officiant, any place big enough can be a venue, do something you enjoy and invite people you like rather than falling into the "they have to be on the list" and "but cousin doofus had it at a country club" traps.

My only input to the wedding has been Yes Dear!! Although to be honest the lakeside country cub is nice. The trouble is after the wedding and reception a lot of them are coming over to the house.   I’ll have a 130 foot long 25 foot wide driveway that everybody will want to park at the end of it for a fast getaway. 

The “street” is closer to an alley size. And parking will be nuts!!!! I’ve invited my neighbors with the hope of getting a little understanding about the parking. But I know it will be a big issue.  

Gee I wonder if I should invite the police and let them sort out parking

My son got married and her father offered a huge wedding with all the trimmings or cash.  She wanted the fairy tale.  Ian suggested down sizing and buying a house with the cash difference.  No deal.  It was a sign......

Do whatever your GF wants, smile and nod, makes the next 50 years smoother.

Congrats,  Dan

In reply to frenchyd :

Not to sound like a jerkyass, but the vows and ceremony are the most important.  That said, I married my wife 3 times.  First in a Methodist Church, second in a Catholic Church (to appease certain family members), and third,(MOST entertaining) In Vegas, by the cheesiest Elvis chapel we could find.  Our kids served as Best Man, and Maid of Honor.  They even splashed our event in neon across Las Vegas Blvd. 

Hmmm.  Maybe I am some kind of jerkyass for getting married 4 times.  Once was by mistake! 

Congratulations!!!!

In reply to frenchyd :

Wife, vineyard, getaway car:

I also find the term swmbo grates on me.

Weddings are tough. They are encircled in thousands of layers of BS from every angle. Even if the couple getting married wants to shed the standard society demands, there are still people like close family (moms and dads and grandma's in our case) who may not want to.

Pick your battles.

The marriage relationship is much more important than the wedding.  As far as I'm concerned, you're saying "I'm binding myself to you forever."  That being said, that sort of occasion deserves something more than just a handful of people watching you say, "Yes dear" and signing on the dotted line.  I do think, though, that many wedding ceremonies/receptions are fiscally irresponsible.  

To sum up my advice about the wedding - relationship is most important, traditional ceremony, and do what you want for the reception.  

Going through this now.

The worst part for us is that we have large families, many family friends that our parents are pressuring to be invited, but we want something small and laid back. Since her parents are graciously footing the bill, they get what they want... but it does cause some minor tension. It's looking like the guest list is going to push 300, and we'd prefer like 50 people there. Finding a venue large enough and open on our preferred dates is presenting a challenge.

I just want to show up, say the stuff, and be done.

We had planned a nice big wedding party, nice venue, starting to get plans together, then EVERYONE started throwing in their opinions, do it here, do it there, invite everyone, if you invite this obscure family member, you gotta invite your 10th cousins removed, blah. 

Quickly it got extremely overwhelming and it turned into me telling everyone “if anyone else has any opinions for OUR wedding, dont bother showing up”

 it went from a big expensive party for EVERYONE ELSE to just us, my parents, her parents, her sister as brides made and the official who doubled as photographer.  Got married in the Florida keys on the hotel dock. It was great, low bull S, didnt cost a fortune(and bury us in debt), and it was about US. Its about your soon to be wife and you. To hell with the rest. If they want a big party, tell em to go have one. 

ddavidv said:

I also no longer believe in the idea of "SWMBO" as a healthy dynamic for a marriage.

Agreed.

I really wish people would stop using that. I find it disgusting.

Weddings and funerals are industries designed around extracting as much of your money as possible - and they're very good at it.

At least around here traditional funerals are beginning to go out of fashion. I suspect weddings will be closely behind as they're getting so ridiculously expensive.

I'm getting married in May. We're doing like Seth and running off to Vegas. She wanted to do it in her previous marriage but her ex didn't want to, he wanted to party.

Anyway, we're not taking the kids (four between us) or any family. Getting hitched in front of the Las Vegas sign, few hundred dollars with a built in honeymoon. We already live together, bought a house together in the fall. 

After we get back we're going to have an informal "I do BBQ" that friends and family are helping with. Food, music, and good times. All done on the cheap and with lots of horse trading and such.

Your mileage may vary.

I don't really have much to say about what all is gonna go on at our wedding but I don't care. Like I had mentioned, it's gonna be at a state park. Outside. Pretty low key, not a lot of people. 20 people tops. Only stipulation from Cassie is that I'm not allowed to wear a dinosaur costume or do any of my "stupid" dances. 

We totaled up the cost of a “proper”wedding, figured out it looked like a nice down payment on a house and drove to Vegas. 

I was raised on the uncensored versions of the classic fairy tales. So whenever I hear somebody saying they had a fairy tale wedding, I keep wondering if it was "Bluebeard" or "The Robber Bridegroom."

Mrs. Mad Scientist and I took the approach of "set a budget, then decide how many guests we can afford." And we couldn't afford anything spectacular. So we went with an "immediate family only" guest list, and got married in a small country church (the church we went to would have looked REALLY empty with our guest list). After pricing out typical wedding reception places, our reaction was, "We could get everyone dinner in a pretty nice restaurant for that rate, and the food would be better!" So we held our reception in a hibachi restaurant. We also found that Publix could bake a wedding cake that looked the part, and actually tasted good (we both agreed that just because it's a wedding cake is no excuse for anything but a chocolate cake), for a fraction of the price of what places that specialize in wedding cakes charge.

Another very memorable low buck wedding was a cousin who got married in the back yard of a house on a lake. The groom arrived in a canoe.

collinskl1 said:

Since her parents are graciously footing the bill, they get what they want.

Beware.  Allowing a sense of entitlement from the parents on either side to run any significant aspect of your lives now, like the plans for your wedding, sets an unhealthy precedent for the ongoing long-term future relationship between said parent(s) and the two of you.  It's basically starting the family dynamic off on the wrong foot, and the longer it goes unaddressed, the harder it will be to correct. Their financial assistance should only ever be both offered and accepted as an unconditional act or not at all, putting your happiness and well being from it above anybody else's...Including their own.

Personally we're not big-wedding people, and we were glad we kept ours as modest as we did. We both agree that the most memorable and enjoyable weddings and receptions we've attended, have also been some of the most intimate and modest ones.  Also, we  both encourage people to at least consider if a destination wedding might be for them.  Even as nice as ours turned out, if we had known before the wedding what we knew after, we very well might have even gone that route instead.

As far as the typically tongue-in-cheek use of SWMBO goes, I do have a true SWMBO.  However, it's certainly not my wife...It's my infant daughter.  When she was born, her older sister was ceremoniously  promoted from SWMBO to Little Shop-Helper-In-Training. My wife however, has always been She-Who-Enables-Every-Thing-Automotive...Or more properly, just She-Who-Enables-Every-Thing.