Sabrina from the Introverted Wife sent in a "Been There, Done That" article for us! I'm so glad to see that practical AND fun weddings are still out there! Check out what she has to say... "Creativity: We had the more classic ceremony to appeal to what traditions our parents and family wanted, but for the reception we decided as we were getting married around our most favorite holiday ever we made it a Halloween theme. I decided I just had to go as Bridezilla complete with a tail I sewed by hand while my husband went as Grouch Marx.
I refused to do something for the wedding just because it was tradition and everyone did it. So I had a 21 year old flower girl because she had always wanted to be one and asked me. I completely trounced the whole only the bride wears white rule. Not only did my flower girl wear a gorgeous short white dress for the reception, but my best friend got to wear her wedding dress again as part of her costume. I don't understand why some thought it was gonna be a big deal. Everyone there knew me and my husband were the ones getting married and a wedding dress got to actually be used more than once. Not to mention they all looked gorgeous in it.
Thrifty: Neither of us had any dreams of grandeur. We knew that by the end of the day it was a success if we got married and we didn't get too many things on fire. Being classic midwesterners it's also really hard to imagine wanting to spend say over $300 on a dress that was going to be worn just once and I didn't even bother looking at true bridal gowns. For me a bridesmaids dress in white was just perfect (I wish I could claim to have made my own dress but really the tail was hard enough. My husband even helped me by sewing up the end).
I found that by doing everything imaginable to avoid things associated with weddings we saved a ton. My mother in law made the ring bearers pillows while I found some cute easter baskets for the flower girls. All of our flowers were silk and my mother worked on making the bouquets. Having the halloween theme helped save a ton of money too as for decorations we just raided our parents basements and stole whatever decorations we could use. And then if there was something I made it wasn't just for the wedding, like the funkin I carved with our monogram.
Sanity: We could have never planned and gotten through this wedding without our friends and family. It made everything so much more relaxed and carefree to know that it wasn't just an organist but my good friend John I was dealing with (who I let pick our wedding music so I walked down the aisle to the Imperial March from Star Wars, I was laughing the whole time). My flowergirl did my hair so I knew I could trust her to do whatever she wanted. But the flip side of letting your family and friends help means I had to step back and just let them do their thing. My mother created the ugliest unity candle in existence but rather than getting bent out of shape about it I laughed it off. In fact by the day of I was rather proud and showed it off to everyone.
Our wedding was not a specific focus of colors, flowers, or theme but of just one thing: fun. It was so hilarious seeing the three guys dressed up as the Marx brothers hamming it up and all of us girls dressed as evil brides attacking each other. When kids didn't want to go down the aisle or were running around writing little love notes to each other we all laughed so hard at how adorable they are.
Everyone knows there's no such thing as a perfect wedding but I'd like to think that when it came to having a fun time we nearly achieved wedding nirvana."
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