maybe someone can explain to me the attraction of having a big wedding because i just don't see it.

my vote is for #3.

+ 1.

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I know I'm promiscuous, but in a classy way

I say go for #1. When else in your life will everyone get together to celebrate you other than you funeral and then you won't even be there to enjoy it!

Whatever... I edited it before you replied.

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I know I'm promiscuous, but in a classy way

My hubby (of 11 years and counting) and I did the small wedding thing and it was perfect. We got married on one of the San Juan Islands, off the coast of Washington and because of this we were able to invite anybody and everybody, but only those people who really wanted to be there actually showed up. The bottom line is, this is a celebration of your relationship - do what feels right to you guys, not what you think you might want in five years. If in 5 years, you wish you'd done the big wedding have a big anniversary party. The best weddings I've ever been to are the ones that "feel like the couple" - big, small, whatever.

Congratulations, you're in for a great adventure...

M

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The beatings will continue until morale improves

My vote is for #2.

Including the families that raised you two should be an important consideration. Your parents sacrificed to help raise you both and denying them the joy of sharing your nuptials will probably lead to arguments down the road.

If you never plan to include either set of parents in your joined lives, then #3.

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DFL > DNF > DNS

I just got married in September and I wouldn't call it a big crazy expensive wedding, but it wasn't tiny either. I had always wanted a princess dress, and for my parents to walk me down the aisle. Seeing my wonderful husband standing at the end, I knew it was the right decision. I will never ever forget that day. It was like your choice 2: it was almost all family and close family friends, and once we are setting in our new city (having also just moved) we plan to have a big party and invite our friends to celebrate with us then.

However, we didn't want to spend a ton on it, so we did all the planning ourself, with some help from my parents, and we only included things we felt were important. We found a beautiful oceanfront site that was pretty much dirt cheap, and our biggest expense was a caterer. We could have cut back there, and we could have on the flowers. When all is said and done, I'm glad we did it. We didn't go a purely traditional wedding, and we wrote our own ceremony and had my brother read it for us. We personalized little things so that it was really about us, and we left on a tandem bike, having met through tris. Our family loved it, and felt it was one of the most relaxing, beautiful weddings, and that it really reminded them of us and our personalities.

We thought about doing something tiny and just us, but I loved getting to share that day with my family and the people I grew up with. I'm so glad we didn't skip it.

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Miles of Life --- Powered by MarkyV

Congrats on your engagement!

Here's a wedding secret - and I apologize for bursting anyone's wedding bubble - but planning, and paying for, a big wedding is a pain in the ass. Unless you are the type of person who loves big blown-out parties, a big wedding is simply a logistical nightmare and very stressful. You're never going to make everyone (read: friends and vocal family members) happy but yet they'll have no qualms telling you that they are unhappy with either your napkin colors or the fact that you won't change the entire menu to work around your third cousin's second wife's best friend's dislike of (insert anything here).

Small private ceremony is, in my mind, the way to go. Or eloping. You can always throw a bigger party later and invite everyone.

For what it's worth, hubby and I had a small 14 person ceremony followed by lunch for all 14 at a fancy restuarant. The intimacy of that ceremony was beautiful and incredibly meaningful to us. However, we invited 80 friends and family to join us for a weekend at a ranch just a few days later so got to spend lots of time together topped off with a bigger party the last night. It was the perfect combination for us and a good compromise with my MIL who initially fought hard for a 250 person formal event.

Edited to add: Mdraegernyc is right - do what feels best for the two of you. If you want a big blown out wedding (and won't go into horrible debt doing it) then go that way. If you want to elope just the two of you on a beach in the South Pacific then go that route. This is about your relationship with your fiance so do what's right for the two of you.

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http://smallfoodbiz.com
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#3...its about getting married, not a wedding....

My bride and I got married 1.5 years ago and did it in a small park garden near where we run/bike and workout....her, me, her mom, one friend of mine....

we spend money on the photographer and have some awesome, contemporary, arty shots of us...very cool...I look at them and the shots make me smile...

...and then a great two week week, hiking on the East Coast, honeymoon....

Another vote for #2, but make sure that at least one part of it (ceremony, reception, etc.) is especially nice. Splurge on this one part so that your fiancee still has that feel of a very special day. That said, this is not a question for you to decide. In my experience, weddings are much more important to women than to men. Make sure that she isn't hiding a secret desire to have a big blowout in the interest of being frugal and reaching a compromise with you. She'll only get one chance at this (hopefully).

totally agree...I am amazed at how many people add uneccessary stress to their lives and forget the real reason why we are doing things...

Congratulations! FINALLY! I am so glad she didn't get away from you, you foot-dragger. :)

I hear you on being frugal. We got married in the backyard of our house and invited local friends and immediate family. I spent the summer planting in the yard and he painted the deck and did home projects. We kept everything low key, our only expenses besides food and clothes were a trellis with arches that we got married under and rented chairs. And flowers, I asked a vendor at the farmer's market to arrange 10 bouquets of local flowers with extras for my bouquet and I think we paid $100 for flowers. The trellis is still there and I love seeing it in my yard everyday. We even had a rehearsal dinner but we ordered pizza from a local place and I made a slide show for entertainment. My husband had all of his friends come out for a round of disc golf at the neighborhood course. We BBQ'd on our wedding day and one of my friend's played guitar for entertainment. Another friend brought a keg of beer he brewed. It was all very natural, unstaged, and completed genuine. Perfect for us.

My fondest memories are seeing my husband's face when I walked down the aisle, saying goodbye to everyone at the reception, and spending our wedding night in our home knowing I could sleep in and not have to go anywhere right away. Even with our simple plans, people poured on the drama, it freaked me out! A lot of people will project their idea of what they think your wedding should be, the best course is to not care so much about what other people think. Get it straight with your fiance before you start talking to people about your plans.

Let us know what you decide, it is a wonderful thing to plan if you don't ruin it with a bunch of junk.

Congratulations!

And what Michelle said.

The best wedding I've ever been to was the bride and groom and minister on the beach at sunset in Kona. The three of us who were invited were late since the groom screwed up the time. We all then went to the hotel for a great dinner and a bottle of champagne.

Three other great weddings that I've heard about and know the couples are:

A small wedding at a friend's home in NorCal. Everyone was asked to write something down about the bride or groom and then during the ceremony, a basket went around and people pulled out a slip of paper and read what was on it.

Two of Katy's and my teammates got married over on Mt. Tam and everyone rode to the ceremony on their bikes, including bride and groom.

Slowman's and Toni's wedding--at Xantusia, outdoors, dogs running around. Say "I do", then the bridal couple changed into jeans. A big party ensued.

In all four cases, the weddings fit the individual couples.

clm

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clm
Nashville, TN
https://twitter.com/ironclm | http://ironclm.typepad.com

I'll go with #2. We had a very small wedding (10 of us altogether, just us, family and couple of friends) and loved it. We wanted to spend our money on our honeymoon enjoying ourselves. But it really depends what you want. I never wanted a big wedding. All I'll say is don't do a big one just because people expect you to. Even though our wedding was tiny it is still by far the best day of my life.

Congratulations!

I did option #1 but didn't do much planning of it (my Mom planned it---I'm such a baby!). It was fun, but not worth the $$$ at all.
If your bride to be and her family won't be offended, go with option 3#.
Save your money and get his & hers awesome tri bikes!

I'll add my congrats too!

as to your question, we did #1 - both of us had huge families and we thought, ok, I thought, we had to do it the "normal" way to keep them all happy. or, happy-ish. Anyway, I enjoyed it, hubby enjoyed it, but we both agree we'd like something a lot more personal and small if we were to go back and do it again. In the scheme of things we didn't actually spend much, we were young and our families are not well off. But we still had 4K of debt after it was done. We were grad students at the time, so that was a burden for several years.

So. Did #1, would recommend doing #2 instead. Make it personal and fun. Spend only what you can afford, and don't let people talk you into extras (like I did!) And in the end, like others have said, not everyone is going to think your wedding is great no mater what you do. Dr. seuss said something like, "Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind."

Have fun!!!

#2 or #3 then take whatever you would have spent on the big party and use it on a downpayment for a new house.

My hubby and I were going to elope but my mom said she would disown me if I did. We went back east to my parents' house and got married on their porch overlooking the mountains. We had a total of 11 there including the minister and his wife. It was perfect for us.

I'm always amazed at how much people spend on a wedding. The day is about getting married and the commitment you two are making to each other, not about keeping your guests happy, spending several grand on a wedding dress and getting so stressed out you can't enjoy it.

Decide what your priorities are and go from there. If you have a large circle of friends, by all means have the party but hire a wedding co-ordinator to handle the stress.

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Jen

"In order to keep a true perspective on one's importance, everyone should have a dog that worships him and a cat that will ignore him." - Dereke Bruce

My husband and I tied the knot at a Mountain Century ride. A few friends were there but for us it was a symbolic and meaningful thing to do. Of course we had both been married before, and we are both over 50 Sometimes younger people who have never been married have a different perspective.

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Nor do I use punctuation in the way a child sprinkles glitter over a ribbon of glue on construction paper - Trash Talk

I know a lot of peeps have given some really great advice, but I thought I would put mine out there too.

It is not so much option 1, 2, or 3. It is picking the things you really want and building the day around those. That way 5 years down the road, she can say "I had everything I wanted at my wedding and we don't have to do that silly 'renew vows' thing so I can have a better party." BTW...my husband and I are very frugal as well ;-)

I got married 1 year ago and my husband and I wanted a) lots of pictures b) open bar c) a good party with our family and friends.

I got my beautiful wedding dress (total princess) on Ebay for $200. Got the flowers on-line and put them together ourselves the day before ($100). Guys wore black suits. Girls wore any shade of blue dresses off the rack. Used a local "home town" caterer. Got married in a church (much cheaper than any other place). We bought the alcohol on our own (kegs & bottles of wine from ALDI). Didn't use color in our invitations and used plain stock paper. I went to a wedding expo and got coupons on a decent DJ (he wasn't the BEST, but it was good).

In the end, we were able to have a "big wedding" on a "small wedding" budget. It was a lot of work and took some real penny pinching, but I am so happy with how it turned out.

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Heather Sweet
http://thesweetsadventure.blogspot.com/

Thanks for all the great responses from everyone!! You guys were a great help.
We have decided to go small. 30 people for the dinner...all very close friends and immediate family. We are inviting more people to the ceramony itself and then we decided we would rent a hall and run our own bar out of it (donations only). That way, we don't have to pay an obscene amount of money for food and drinks and servers etc. This way, everyone can come to the ceramony and then drink/dance with us at night and we can just have a close intimate dinner for everyone we truly want there. :)

Echoing everyone else's comments, I think it's important to pick what is important to you as a couple and what you want to remember in the years to come. When we were planning our wedding someone told me it wasn't that 30 minutes of the ceremony that were the most important - it was the 30 years that followed that required the most attention to detail.

I will mention that there are some things I regret about our wedding because we opted pretty much for a combo of option 2 and 3. We didn't want to get our mothers involved because we knew it would be an explosion of wedding planning and cost that we didn't want and couldn't afford, iand it would lead to a huge round of arguing about whose wedding it was anyway. We got together with our best friends and planned a really simple wedding with 8 people on the beach. We called our families the night before to tell them what we were going to do and hoped that they understood. Of course everyone was good with it since we'd been living together for 7 years already and this was just a formality, except my mother who came totally unglued which was totally expected since I'm an only daughter.

Lets just say that my relationship with my mother had always been pretty problematic and one of the reasons we did what we did. This didn't help it any and I stubbornly dug in my heels to make matters worse when she wanted to throw us a big party afterwards and we wanted to decline gifts and just have the party. If we wouldn't accept the gifts she wouldn't give us the party. I wanted to do donations to the American Heart Association or SPCA in lieu of gifts. Needless to say, we didn't have the party.

In retrospect, I would have probably opted to include our mothers because I think they were both hurt at not being included. We could have compromised on some things to make them happier, but we were impoverished and headstrong graduate students at the time and trying to be totally independent of our families. However, I would not have changed anything else because our wedding was one of the most memorable days of our relationship. This year we celebrated our 25th anniversary (and 32 yeas together - basically our whole lives since going to college!) and had the original 8 guests along with others for a big dinner and party to celebrate. We finally got the big party (and no gifts!)

I did #1 the first time and am now divorced. Have a small ceremony and save your money for something else.

The wife and I did both. Our cultures are pretty old school (think My Big Fat Greek Wedding times 2) and the weddings are huge.

I have always sided towards the small intimate wedding with perhaps a party with a lot of friends at a later date. I like this because I don't believe in blowing a ton of money on a day that has so many people that you won't have time to spend or remember the time spent with the majority of the attendees.

The first of our weddings was put together in under a week and was in my brother's back yard. 17 people and a simple lunch after and then we spent time together, relaxed and partied. This was the way I always wanted it to happen.

The second wedding was to honor the traditions of my wife's family - it was a bit over 650 people.

We both look back and remember both weddings and appreciate them. But we cherish the small intimate wedding the most.

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"your horse is too high" - tigerchik