Ridiculous Ideas, Part 2

This installment of ridiculous ideas was brought to you by the same friend who came up with the chain letter invitation idea, but has since been caught fire with other friends who have recently been married or been to a wedding (which is approximately 99.9% of everyone I know).

The Hand-Me-Down Wedding:

It is what it sounds like - other recently-marrieds donate their unused or gently-used wedding items to me. I have already had offers of dresses, candles, ribbons, wrapping paper, and my favorite, invitations (with the previous details covered up by a post-it note with our details). All that's missing is an unused venue and some gently-used food.:-)

Wedding Traditions to Keep

Following my most recent post, I stumbled across this manifesto from the Offbeat Bride site, and now I feel terrible. I felt the need to add something positive to my list.

Traditions I'm OK with:

1. Large weddings. I personally don't want a large ceremony, but weddings are great places to meet new people. People at weddings tend to be extra friendly (maybe it's the champagne), so go ahead and invite every person you've met since kindergarten, their parents, and their dogs.
2. Flower petal/bird seed/bubble exits. It's cathartic to hurl things at the happy couple, because weddings are emotional events. Rice is a bad idea though (I like birds) and be nice with the bird seeds, that dress might have cost more than your house.
3. Open bars. Yes, alcohol is expensive and your wedding should be about starting you life with your soul mate, not getting your friends drunk, but we are all selfish creatures and like to be rewarded for driving god-only-knows how long with a rather espensive present.
4. Full meals. See #3. 'Nuf said.
5. Traditional ceremonies. Do what makes you happy. Don't do tradition just because you think you have to, but if that's what you want, I will gladly dress up and sit on a hard pew for you. Everyone secretly likes dressing up.
6. Make an entrance. Wedding receptions vary so widely these days, that sometimes guests don't know when things are starting, or if you're even there yet (especially if you're doing post-ceremony photos). Have an emcee announce your entrance - make it unique if you want.
7. Expensive cakes. No one is going to complain about a delicious cake. No one will complain about Costco sheet cake either, but if it's important to you, go for it.
8. The cake smash. Yes, this tradition is messy, can ruin make-up and dresses, and is childish. That's why I like it. It's playful and a nice break in the seriousness of the event. A little frosting nose-dab is a nice alternative, though.
9. The money dance. What's wrong with making a little money? Combine this with the father-daughter and mother-son dance and avoid all that sappy, boring stuff.

Also, please check out my new sidebar image, from Bride$hare.net. It's a great way to share decorations, rental fees, etc, with another couple if there were anyone else interested in my general area. So especially if you're in Washington State, please go check it out, for both our sakes.

Terrible Wedding Traditions

I want people to have fun at my wedding. I don't want them to speculate on whether I ruined my credit rating or sold a kidney to finance it, I don't want to try to out-do the latest celebrity wedding, and I don't want the term "princess" applied in any context. I have compiled a list of wedding don'ts as a guideline for myself as I plan.

1. Skip the 2-hour long ceremony. Folding chairs are really uncomfortable, and I'd bet money that even hard-bitten atheist pagans can recite 1st Corinthians 13 if they've been to as many weddings as I have. I know that all those special musics/scripture readings/candle lightings are to include relatives who will be sniffy if they don't get their moment in the spotlight, but maybe it is time to start retraining the way people think about weddings.
2. The puffy ballgown wedding dress. You look silly. Stop that.
3. Matchy-matchy attendants. This also looks silly, and can be humilating for bridesmaids with a body type wrong for the dress you chose. Also, the groomsmen look miserable in those sea-foam green tuxes. You are friends with these people for a reason, trust them to dress themselves for your wedding. Give them a color scheme, and move on.
4. No one is going to remember the flowers, ribbons, or antique lace decorations. Especially not at the ceremony, and especially not if you follow #1 and have a 10 minute ceremony. They'll have time to settle in and read their programs before being ushered to the reception, and won't even have time to judge the flora and fauna.
5. Take your pictures before the ceremony, except for any "whole group" photos, which will be a really awesome keepsake if you have a small wedding. The whole "it's bad luck if the groom sees the bride in her dress before the ceremony" is a load of crap, and we all know it. I have seen great wedding photos of the groom's first look at the bride, and how could you possibly get that shot during the ceremony?
6. Assigned seating. Oh my gosh, are we in grade school again? Let people pick who they want to sit next to. And let the significant others of the attendants sit with the wedding party. There's a good chance they don't know anyone at the wedding and they will not leave with happy memories if they end up sitting at a table all by themselves.
7. While on the topic of seating - the wedding party elevated throne seating. Ok, yes, it's your day. You got married, 90% of people get married, you were not elected as the new pope. Sit at a table level with everyone, with your family and wedding party. You are going to be up and down so much, don't worry about everyone getting to see you.
8. Socialize! You invited all these people to share your special day, now share it with them. Don't leave the reception early, no one remembers that old tradition about not leaving until the bride and groom leave. They'll sneak out if they want to. Also, your car is going to be defaced with toilet paper, tin cans, and window paint no matter when you leave. This is one of the only jobs the groomsmen have, they take it seriously. Let them have fun.
9. Tossing the bouquet and garter. Oh barf. The garter toss is a humiliating tradition for all invovled, and the bride possibly paid hundreds of dollars for her bouquet, and now you want her to toss it into a crowd of emotional women under the pressure of remaining single? I hated being shoved into that crowd, and there is no way I am making anyone else do this.

I've had a lot of 2-hour long ceremonies to sit through and form this list.

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

You must, must, MUST read TackyWeddings.com. I have been staring at wedding websites all weekend and this is the only one that made me laugh. I also found Style Me Pretty, which is a bit on the girly/out-of-my-budget side, but there is a great DIY section. So the overwhelming cutesy of Style Me Pretty was nicely balanced by the terror that is TackyWeddings.com, and my weekend had a good balance. Yin and yang.

The problem with great ideas is that there are so many I like, and if I used them all the wedding would quickly turn into a frightening hodge-podge of coffee beans, bread baskets, and tiny hand-made boxes. And then I stop and realize I'm obsessing and I scare myself. I'm wracking up a great list of "What Not to Do"s though.

Step 1: The Budget

I have hours a day to spend on the internet, and I've done my research. If you want to get married and have no money, the first thing you do is make a budget. But I don't know anything about weddings and had no idea what to budget for. God bless the internet though, because I found a budget online, an excel sheet with built in formulas, just what my OCD loves, and spent the weekend playing with it: WeddingPlanningOnABudget.

Now I'm scared.

The budget did indeed confirm that we could probably have a fun and classy-enough wedding (as in, not serving pizza at the reception) for $3000. That's approximately infinity times more money that either of us have because both of us are unemployed and, in this job market, unemployable. So...anyone have a job two broke college-grads could do? We are excellent weeders, not afraid of manual labor, and motivated by impending poverty.;)

New Favorite Website

In what is starting to feel like my eternal search for resources, I stumbled across OffbeatBride.com.

I've found a new way to waste hours at a time.

Not only that, it is basically supporting all my possibly hare-brained schemes. Like letting my bridesmaids wear whatever dress they want (within a color scheme). Look, there are even pictures! Doesn't that look nice? Don't the bridesmaids look happy? It also solves the problem of etiquette dictating I at least help pay for dresses if I'm going to insist they all wear $500 creations, because now they can shop at Goodwill for all I care. I'll gladly finance half the cost of a Goodwill dress.:-)

To beat the summer heat, I wandered into Barnes & Noble today. I just wanted to see if they carried the Offbeat Bride book, which they didn't, but they had about a million wedding planner books. Just books of lists. I love lists, but it was overwhelming. It was also ironic that a lot of the "How to Plan a Wedding on a Budget" books all said not to buy wedding books. I guess they were betting on most people buying the books and then reading them, but I'm a cheapskate so I skim books before buying.

I came away from the whole experience with one question: if you have a destination wedding, how do you get all the crap to your destination? The wedding dress (and accessories) is going to take up at least one suitcase. Do you FedEx all the reception favors, etc, to yourself?