Got a venue and a date, pissed off Mom

[iris lily]

citrine, I love the sounds of your plans! You went right to the core of what is important to you: a fun party with food, dancing, friends. That's great that you are skipping all of the unimportant stuff.

[bae]

My wife and I got married ~15 years ago, in/near Silicon Valley, on Halloween.

We rented the Monterey Bay Aquarium for the evening, and had nibblies catered by the Aquarium's restaurant, and paid a small corkage fee for our own drinks brought in. A 10 minute ceremony in front of the main tank, then a costume party for the evening. We had several local surf bands playing live, for a few hundred $$$ each. No photographers, or florists, or any of the usual camp followers.

I think the whole enterprise was < $7000, for ~100 folks. I think this was because they were used to doing corporate/charity functions, not weddings, and didn't have The Special Wedding Pricing.

And what a treat it was for everyone, to have the whole aquarium to explore with so few people.

There was some resistance from some of the relatives because we weren't having a "normal" event, but they got over it.

[redfox]

We too had an unusual venue, a local park, with a WPA era lodge, and cabins for overnight guests. The cabins usually house grade schoolers who are there for science camp. Because it was a park, there were members of the publc there as well, though our wedding site was outdoors in a glen, and no one who wasn't there for the wedding ventured over.

We got there in the morning to set up, and had games available for guests to play outside, and had a potluck lunch. It was a really lovely, collaborative day. The wedding was at 4, and the swing band came at 8 to the lodge, where dinner had been served. We rented chairs, tables, linens, and food service gear. At the last moment, I realized we needed processional music, so I called my then 15 year old niece, asked what she knew on her flute, and we settled on a piece she played for us. Pretty low tech, and she loved being a part of the ceremony.

My SIL is a caterer, so she did the food, for 100 people, in our kitchen, as her gift to us. We paid for the food, and fed everyone for $600, including wine & beer. The biggest expense was the band. We printed the invitations ourselves, set up a basic website with details, and setup a registry of our top 25 non-profits for people to donate to in lieu of gifts.

I want to share three tips a good friend shared with me, that make all the difference...

1. If you exchange rings, they may not fit as you expected, as your hands will be swollen. Don't panic, just have your beloved slip the ring on your finger as far as it will go, and as the cemony continues, wiggle it on the rest of the way yourself.

2. Immediately after the ceremony ends, have a quiet place you two can go to to be alone, gaze into each others eyes, and revel in your new status. It is a most sacred moment, and you need to anchor it together, just the two of you. Take whatever time you need to connect, get grounded & centered.

3. Arrange for a plate of food & a water, not alcohol, to be there waiting for you. You will be famished! You will need this to refresh you as you re-enter your waiting friends & family to welcome you back as a married couple, and it will give you energy for the next phase of the event.

We had a great party! I hope yours will be too.

[citrine]

Thank you everyone for sharing your experiences
Talked to Mom and we conveyed to her what was the most important to us. We are also hiring the photographer a la carte, just for the getting ready, ceremony, ****tail hour, and first dances....then they are free to go. We are also interviewing various dj's and the like. As for favors, Matt and I are going to make diyas (clay holder for candles) with a votive in it with their name and table number. Block of clay is cheap enough and so are votives....we will have the sign "Thank you for lighting up our lives" on the table holding them.
I also found out that Vistaprint does wedding invites!! Very excited since they are so nice and affordable...I use them for my business cards!

[mm1970]

I am on a blog list, and I really liked this post she did on getting married for cheap:

http://www.squawkfox.com/2011/11/21/wedding/

My photos were $600 in 1996, so $1000 doesn't sound too bad. But you don't really NEED professional wedding photos.

What you could try to do is hire a professional photographer to take photos for 30 mins to an hour (pay by the hour). Many of my local friends do this annually for their holiday cards. I'd be willing to bet that if you booked a photographer like this for "annual family photos" you would get a MUCH better price quoted. Just don't tell them it's a wedding.

My friends got married in September, and that's what the wife did. The catering they were being quoted was outrageous! She called a different caterer and got a quote for a party (which was 1/2 price), and used it to bargain down the other caterer. People hear "wedding" and price goes way up.

Music wise, you could use your Ipod, but I love to dance, especially Indian music, so I'd be willing to pay for that.

[Perplexa]

I'm not married, but I have a number of friends who've told me that the one think they regretted skimping on was the photographer. They found that the wedding day was a total blur, and the only way they got to find out what really happened was to look at the pictures afterwards, so bad pictures were a huge disappointment. On the other hand, they also said that all the other ridiculous expenses proved to be just that: ridiculous expenses.

[jennipurrr]

Sounds like you are really making progress on the wedding planning! We had a crazy wedding story...supposed to have a simple beach wedding but a major hurricane made landfall the Thursday before. Argh. Somehow we changed everything in less than a week and relocated to my home town, 4 hours away. We had some issues over the guest list...distant relatives didn't make the cut, sorry. Had some conflict with MIL (if you know her from my writings...) she wanted a keg! Ugh, no...not our style. We did end up where everyone got a drink with dinner and a champagne toast. That way the alcohol lovers were sort of pacified and we also didn't have anyone embarrassing us and themselves on our dime.

The restaurant sounds fabulous! That is what I tell everyone...think about places that aren't usually wedding venues. We ended up having our reception at the restaurant where we had our first date. We were able to work around their slow time (while a football game was going on = dead here) and we got half the restaurant, for no fee...we just pared down the menu to 4 choices and it was wonderful and more inexpensive than any kind of caterer, even hors d'oeuvres.

I read you are not interested in a cake...but, we got ours from Publix (not sure where you live) which is an upscale grocery store. Honestly, until it came down to the replanning, I would have NEVER considered a cake from a grocery store (oh the horror!). Gorgeous cake and it was so much cheaper than a bakery. It really does not look like it came from a grocery store at all! Other people I know have had excellent luck with Publix too. I've also gotten a bridal shower cake there and it was super cute too and inexpensive, relatively speaking.

My photographer was $2000 in 2004. I am very happy to have a wonderful collection of quality pictures from the special day. We skipped the videographer and I don't regret that. I think I would be sooo disappointed if I wasn't happy with the pictures. If you have a friend or family member who is good with a camera, maybe you can supplement and get a smaller photography package...I had a friend who did that. but then that person wouldn't really get to enjoy the day, but they may want to do it as a gift to you.

Since we were getting married on the beach...DH and groomsmen were wearing a white button down, french cuff shirt and black pants. DH bought them the outfit and cuff links for their groomsmen gifts (of course on super sale). And they could wear it after the fact. You said you weren't doing attendants, but just thinking of little savings we did.

We went to a wedding just a couple weeks ago and they didn't do the official rehearsal dinner. They did an event the night before dinner and drinks at a blues club. It was a lot of fun and I don't remember the wording, but it was very clear from the invite (a casual, cute email) that it was dutch. That way everybody got to get together the night before but the food and entertainment was all handled by the establishment and each person.

Oh yeah, by the way...both my Mother and I are fairly laid back, rational beings. We got into a screaming crying fight a few weeks before the wedding over what hair clip I was going to wear! Weddings inevitably fray at everyone's nerves even when people have the best of intentions.

[Gregg]

DW and I got married in front of immediate family and had a nice dinner with about 20 people on a Friday night. On Saturday we had a blow out bash at a friend's lake cabin for the family and all our friends. Friends did the cooking, mostly salads and grilling. We had 2 bars/bar tenders with beer, wine and a moderate selection of ****tails. My stereo with several hours of music on a reel-to-reel tape recorder (did I mention we have been married for a while?). Had a couple girls hired to babysit the younger kids. Dancing on the deck and the pier and a bonfire on the beach, complete with smores instead of wedding cake. All totaled our wedding and reception cost less that $2,500, probably $3,500 or $4,000 in today's dollars. Not for everyone, but it was relaxed, fun, pretty easy and everyone, including us, had a great time.

[Stella]

Citrine I hope you get the wedding you want and your mom calms down a bit.

We were very young and very broke and we eloped. It was great. I don't regret it a bit. Our wedding cost us $67 in 2003 and it was a lot of fun. I come from a long line of elopers, so people understood. My sister, parents, both sets of grandparents and a set of maternal great-grandparents all eloped, so expectations for a wedding were not high.