Weddingbee Blog

It’s finally time to discuss the biggest wedding decision we had to make. In this post, you get to find out how our wedding became a non-wedding.

Mr. Mary Jane and I discussed marriage and wedding immensely in the weeks before and after the proposal. We found that we really had three options for how to celebrate our day:

1 - Go All Out

• Cost: $15k+
• Date: early Summer 2010
• Location: Rented venues in our area
• Guests: 70-110
• Details: All of them, baby, yeah! From the font on the STDs to the bows on the favors, this would be one detailed day.

2 - Budget Country/Picnic Wedding

• Cost: $3-5k
• Date: early Summer 2010
• Location: Mr. MJ’s family’s nearby rural property
• Guests: 70-110
• Details: Budget/DIY everything. Potluck buffet, hamburgers and hot dogs grilled by uncles and cousins, grocery store cake, cans of beer and $6 wines.

3 - City Hall

• Cost: <$1000
• Date: Fall/Winter 2009
• Location: local/regional city hall, plus dinner somewhere close.
• Guests: Parents only
• Details: Classy dress and shoes for me, nice suit for him, flowers and maybe a little cake from the grocery store.

Option one was vetoed pretty much immediately. We’re paying for this, and that kind of money doesn’t just magically appear in one’s bank account. We have worked damn hard for our money, and a wedding just isn’t a big enough priority for us to spend it on.

Options 2 and 3 were tossed around for a while. We didn’t really want a wedding, but we also didn’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings by not inviting them. The idea of a big party with friends and family sounded fun, but an intimate elopement sounded much more romantic, more comfortable, and more ’us’. And given that Mr. MJ’s family vastly outnumbers mine, we felt that Option 2 would look like a Mr.-Mary-Jane-Family Reunion more than a wedding/reception.

We finally decided to ask our parents what they thought. Both of our sets of parents were married in their local courthouses with minimal amounts of guests. They were supportive of our desire to do the same. Option three also allowed us to get married sooner, which was important to us. (We did not want to have a big wedding in the middle of a school semester, so Options 1 and 2 would have had to be pushed off ’til next summer.)

So, Option 3 it was. The hardest part of all of this was deciding who to invite. We didn’t want to entirely elope because we thought our parents would want to be there. Mine live far away, but they definitely wanted to attend, even for just a tiny affair. Mr. Mary Jane’s live close. So with his siblings, that’s 6 guests. Perfect. But what about grandparents? Mr. MJ’s only live a few miles away. But if they were invited, we’d have to invite mine, who are spread across the country. And both of my sets live near aunts and uncles and cousins, who would also find out, and would hence need to be invited to avoid hurt feelings. And if my aunts, uncles, and cousins were coming, then so should Mr. Mary Jane’s, and he has a lot more of them. Where could we draw the line? Suddenly we’d ballooned from 6 guests to over 40, and that’s not including any non-family friends. Some intimate event, eh? We ultimately decided to put our collective foot down. Just parents and siblings.

Mr. Mary Jane’s family will probably throw some kind of party for us, and we plan to visit friends on the west coast as well as my family around the country — all at later dates. These occasions/trips will allow us to have fun with our friends and family without forcing them all to come to BFE for 4-6 hours of expensive and mostly distracted/non-quality time with us.

Having made the decision not to have a wedding, why am I here blogging about it? Well, I hope that my process can help out some brides out there who are on the fence about elopement, traditions, and/or civil ceremonies. I haven’t found very many message threads or blogs on the subject. I want to show you [the internet] that a city hall wedding does not have to mean jeans and flip-flops, a surly judge, or a bun-in-the-oven (but it can! that’s the beauty of it - it can be anything you want!). I hope that ours will be classy, personal, and simple. Join me as I search for the perfect dress, deal with naysayers, will my hair to grow faster, design our wedding announcements, and work with Mr. MJ to plan the perfect honeymoon.

Was it hard for you to decide what kind of wedding you wanted? What factors influenced your choice?

[The sources for all of the photos above was The Knot - Real Weddings]