Lesson 2: Skip what you don’t care about
I already wrote about this a little, but it’s excellent advice (if I do say so myself) so I’ll say it again. Here were my priorities for our wedding:
- get married
- be able to have all of our family and friends there
- don’t go into debt
- fried chicken for at least one meal
- have lots of toasts so that people can say nice things about us
Here were my husband’s priorities:
- get married
- have all our family and friends there
- have really good music
- open bar
So guess what! We had all those things. You don’t need to have anything you don’t care about at your wedding. Here are some things we didn’t have (and I have not regretted for one moment):
- guest book. (We got a ton of lovely cards anyway, and the time for me to write lovely sentiments is not the time when there is a glass of champagne that could be mine)
- expensive wedding bands (we spent under $250 for the pair. They look great. (Plus easily replaceable if your husband loses his at the gym. Not that that happened already, or anything….)
- engagement photos (if you don’t have pictures of yourself in love yet, start snapping those selfies, kids!)
- decorations (oh, you wanted something beyond the professional sculptors and painters who helped us out?)
- limos (my beautiful pregnant-at-the-time-and-now-amazing-mom matron of honor was our DD and took us for a pit stop to McD’s so we could fast fuel before the reception!)
- fancy rehearsal dinner. We had an uber casual one instead, in the (easy) beautifully refurbished hall at the church. We brought champagne from Costco, beer and takeout fried chicken, and we ordered pies from the nearby local pie shop. It was exactly what I wanted. And DELICIOUS. My only regret was that I didn’t feel like I could eat the four pieces of fried chicken that I actually wanted to eat, and instead only had two. Wah wahhhh.
- wedding cake. There is a local grocery chain that is famous for its cupcakes. At $.60 a pop, they were delicious and affordable and they looked beautiful!
- matchy bridesmaids
Aren’t they gorgeous? I asked them to pick their own navy dresses (which I HOPE they really wear again!) (Notice the Chihuly sculpture in the background…one of my favorite artists!) - matchy groomsmen (they were never going to match anyway because we had half Army, half civilian plus one Coastie groomsmen!)
- separate musicians for the wedding: the church has a world class organist, so we got to hear world class tunes!
- formality. As I mentioned, we didn’t have the sit down dinner option even available to us. My dad called after the wedding and raved about how much he loved being able to spend the reception time catching up with exactly the people he wanted to see. Our friends and family are pretty spread out, so it was nice that people could treat our wedding as a mini reunion.
- “wedding” save the dates and a full photographer’s package- as I discussed in a past blog.
twentiesinyourpocket 