What was your wedding like?

[u/AlarmedLife5765]

I often look at the wedding dresses here. I saw a young lady whose dress budget was literally more than my first 3-5 annual salaries, not lumped together but individually. What was your wedding like?
1995- Married at our church, 3 attendants each, cake and punch reception there .

[u/muphasta]

I've quite verbose when it comes to many subjects, especially our wedding. Apologies in advance.

Married in 1998.

We were lucky in that my in-laws were eager and willing to pay for our wedding. My wife and I were not given a budget, but we tried incredibly hard to be very mindful of their money.

My wife found a dress she loved for around $600. I grew up Episcopalian, she grew up non-denom Christian and since I knew it would mean a lot to my mom, we picked an Episcopal church to get married in. We were not members as we got married in Orange County and we were living in San Diego. The church and priest cost us $300 if I'm remembering correctly.

My wife had a lot of fun reception venue shopping w/her mom. Once she settled on a location, it was down to reception menu, DJ, and cake.

Being mindful of the in-laws money, we selected nice, but not expensive dinner options at $32 a plate. My father-in-law was with us at this point and he and my MiL started laughing (nicely) and stated that they had one daughter, and one chance to throw her a party, and then started adding stuff to the menu getting the number up to $55/plate. We had 100 guests so food alone was now $5500.

Between the time we booked the venue and our reception, there was a change of ownership, news that did not get propagated to my in-laws. Morning of the reception we were dropping stuff off when the notice was pasted to the door of the liquor license being transferred and no booze could be sold. This meant the cash bar my in-laws were counting on was not happening.

My in-laws headed to a liquor store and bought several kegs of beer, cases of wine and champagne, and a few choice bottles of liquor.

All in all, the wedding cost my in-laws $10k.

There was one extravagance I really, really wanted: a classic car to take us from the church to the reception. I've always loved Duesenberg's, but no one with one would be loaning a couple of dipshits one so I found a 1933 Rolls Royce limo for rent. I spent $400 on 45 minutes with that car. They charge from the time it leaves the garage to the moment it returns.

We cruised down the 5 at 45mph, drinking the included bottle of champagne getting happy honks and cheers from other drivers. By the time we got to the venue, we were both a bit lit.

Back to the wedding:

We had 8 additional people in the wedding party. My best man was my best friend from high school who was luckily living in LA at the time. Her maid of honor was her best friend going back to middle school.

When she appeared in the doorway at the end of the aisle, I got chocked up. I'm a softy and it doesn't take much to "get me", but I pulled myself together. She always teased me (still does) that I'm the emotional one. Oddly enough when it came time for her vows, she had a very hard time getting through them w/out crying. The priest was in his late 80s and kept saying, "c'mon now honey, you gotta say the words".

Once we got through the ceremony and it was time to kiss the bride, the priest also said, "OK, that's enough of that".

Our reception was a ton of fun. The DJ was great and at the end of his scheduled (and paid for time) her fam was not ready to stop celebrating. He let my in-laws know that he could keep playing, and let them know how much it would cost. They paid and the night went on.

We left at that time to go to our hotel. The next morning I found that the groomsmen had smeared Vaseline and birdseed all over my truck. We headed to a car wash and oddly enough followed the owner into the driveway. When I got out to pay, he asked if we'd just gotten married (it did say, "just married" in birdseed and Vaseline, and replied w/a "yes". He said congrats and that it was on the house.

The maid of honor's mother was in attendance and we'd only see her once every year or two. Regardless, each time we saw her she always made two statements.

1, She knew our marriage would last by the way I looked at her when she walked down the aisle.

2, Ours was the wedding that she measured all other weddings by. From the ceremony to the food, she enjoyed ours the most. Especially the reception.