Weddingbee Blog

Since I’ve got two weddings under my belt (both to the same man and within 6 months, in case some of you forgot, or never knew) I thought I’d do a little comparison of the two.

First, we had a small ceremony at Point Dume in Malibu. It was casual, quick and pretty inexpensive.

The pluses for this day all stemmed from its simplicity. Yes, there were stressful moments, but the stresses weren’t even blips on the radar in comparison to some of the stresses of our big wedding. So, some people were late, or lost, and Malibu has no cell reception. Everyone eventually made it, so I didn’t care.

Everybody, yes everybody

The wedding was small enough that we didn’t need any beach permits, I went and bought my dress for $100 at Anthropologie after texting pics to Momma MB. The ’reception’ was lunch at a restaurant with cakes made by my uncle, the invites were 1-sided cards printed at home, most of our decorations came from Chinatown, our officiant filed our marriage license paperwork for us, and we had way fewer vendors to deal with (which meant fewer vendors to give me trouble. Our officiant and photographer at this wedding were phenomenal, and those were the only two vendors).

See, I just care ’bout kissing and hugging.

If this had been our only wedding, there would have been some definite negatives—most of them stemming from the fact that many people that are very important to us wouldn’t have been there. And since I had ideas about my wedding when I was younger and this didn’t match those, I would have felt as though I’d lost some of that. But if you have a small family, and no childhood dreams of a different kind of wedding, then rest assured that this kind of wedding will still give you that special feeling. There was still that emotional charge of confirming that forever is now with this one other person, and we were still totally blissed out.

All beach wedding photos by Leasa Eisele

Second, there was our large, family oriented, Catholic wedding in Castroville, Texas. It was still somewhat casual (we’re just not black-tie people), decidedly not-quick and still budget-friendly.

Photo by Aunt Annie

This wedding gave me all of those things I always expected. A dress made by Momma MB, being married in a pretty church by our family priest, having all of our family members there (we have huge families), carrying a pretty bouquet with Daddy MB walking me down the aisle, seeing Mr. MB at the end of that aisle dressed in his finest, feeding each other cake, and being twirled around in a pretty dress by my new husband, Daddy MB, and some flower girls.

Photo by Aunt Annie

But with all of that came stress: stress about what to cut from the budget, stress about pleasing all of those family members, stress about planning from another state (I didn’t see our venue in person until a month before the wedding), stress about my over-ambitious DIY projects, and stress of dealing with vendors (seriously stressful).

Photo by Uncle Chris

If this had been our only wedding, then Mr. MB wouldn’t have gotten his dream of a laid-back day spent barefoot in the sand. Mr. MB really enjoys being laid-back; his dream is to have a job that will allow him to wear flip-flops, shorts and a t-shirt every day.

If there are any ladies out there on the fence about what kind of wedding to have, I can tell you one thing for certain. Both days were great—whatever you choose will be the right choice. There were really big pluses and some minuses to both of our weddings. And if you feel like you can’t have two, I sort of disagree. What’s wrong with keeping Church and State separate? What’s wrong with the bride and groom finding a way to both have what they want? What’s wrong with accounting for the fact that many young people move far away from where they grew up and start new lives?

There are members of our family that simply couldn’t have physically come to our wedding in California, but it’s the wedding that Mr. Moonbeam always dreamed of. Planning a wedding in Texas when you live in California is difficult, but it’s the wedding I always dreamed of. And the funny thing is, Mr. Moonbeam and I each loved the other’s dream weddings, too.

Just for the record, not one person got upset with us for having two weddings. I didn’t even hear of anything being said behind our backs, and word travels fast in our families.

In conclusion, we did what was right for us, and hopefully this lets a few people know that doing what’s right for them will be just perfect.

Do you and your FI have different ideas of what constitutes the perfect wedding? How are you compromising between your two ideal weddings?