I agree with this. It is what I was thinking when I made my first post, but I knew that Joe would swoop in and make strings of words more coherent than I could type.

 

Actually Nagase's point about "lasting forever" has some merit. Might be more conceptual than visual to get the idea across, but racing around a track and being married have a lot of similarities.

 

I got married for less than $800, it was a nice ceremony at the Garden Club in Jacksonville on the bank of the St. John's. Afterwards we had a small reception and my bride and I went to Tampa for our honeymoon. I suggest spending money on the honeymoon and keeping the wedding itself lower key.

 

I'm not sure why it should matter to us.

I can't think of any wedding that would be cool enough to make it any more important to me that any bride would still want to attend.

If you adopt any theme...make it frugality.

We spent $2000 on our WHOLE wedding. Yes, we had a reception, yes, there was food and cake, yes everyone had a table and chair, yes there were flowers...just not too many. The church put their flowers on the pews, and I bought them for the altar etc. I got as many of my buddies as I could to help with cooking duties, and just went to Sam's and dropped a few hundred on good meat. I got my mom's friends to bring side dishes and desert. Her family brought the cake, her dad brought several nice bottles of Tequila we had grabbed in Mexico. She also bought a VERY nice dress while we were in Mexico City that would have cost 5 times as much here. Her dress, hair and make-up alone were almost half of our budget, but was very much worth it as she looked AMAZING coming down that aisle. I rented a tux, since I wanted one nicer than I could buy, although I now have a simpler one in the closet. The local boy scout troop I help with brought their tables and chairs and set them up at my family's house (a 6000sq ft steel building fleshed out like a regular house and with PLENTY of entertaining space).

We have never regretted it. Everyone came and brought gifts. Everyone ate and enjoyed themselves, and we still have all the requisite pictures to remember it. If I could go back I might have spent a *little* bit more on decorations, as that was all that was lacking...but we spent that whole year saving for a house (put down 15%), and that has made us much happier than any $50K wedding could have.


EDIT: koto types faster than me....+1 on what he said. After all...that wedding only lasts a day...and you're incredibly stressed, and around so many people that it FLYS by and you don't soak it up at all. The few sweet days after are what you should really soak up.

 

We put our wedding on like it was big party. Yeah it was expensive (relatively speaking since we paid for it ourselves), but it was a blast. When the place where we had the reception finally shut down, a large group came back to our place (we went elsewhere) and partied the rest of the night. When we came back to our house in the morning there were all these people here- front yard full of cars and everybody inside had raided our closets for "morning" clothes.

 

I think ours was around 5k which is cheap for wedding. Have good food/beer/wine and everyone's happy!

 

I appreciate the generalization about brides feelings of weddings, but she pretty emphatically disagrees. Her parents really have no say in what's going on because they aren't contributing a dime. It's pretty much just about us.

Believe me, I've pestered her about this a lot lately--about how it really is a girly frilly affair. She says it is not and should not be.

I had actually come up with a neat idea that is not cost effective: turbine/compressor wheel flowers. they're abstract, pretty, and pure awesome. now I just need a few hundred to make it really cool...

Finally, a response that's more in line with what we're planning!

We are planning the most epic party of our lives thus far. It's a friend-focused event with some family along for various reasons. Oh and we'll include a nice ceremony up front to express our feelings for each other and bond us. After that though, great beer, live music, phenomenal food and that kind of thing.

It will cost some money, but that's fine.

I see the benefit of making it cheap and all that, but it wont be a 2000 or 5000 dollar wedding. our food budget is way beyond that as it is, but it's probably better food than most responders to this thread have ever eaten. **** the dry chicken at the Sheraton!!

 

We had our service in the oldest church in ATL- right down town and spared by Sherman. The reception was the party and where we focused the most dough. We scored a live jazz band, righteous food and drink after three catering interviews. Sticking with the historical architecture, the location was the oldest existing residence in our town (just five miles from downtown ATL) but it was a perfect venue with plenty of room inside, multiple rooms and large exterior courtyard outback. We also hired an editorial photographer vs. a typical wedding photog. Everything shot in BW - and most in a docu style- but he did do a few of the typical group shots at the church front. The photos rocked.

If you're serious about working in the auto theme, I say start digging through archives. The stuff that I see fitting for a wedding came from way back when stuff was hand crafted - when aerodynamics didn't have so much say in a car's appearance. Stuff like old gauges, wood and metal ornamentation found on dashes, steering wheels, bonnet straps, goggles... you get the idea.

 

I had the typical wedding. About 275 people. Church service, reception in a community hall. Open bar and awesome food. A very simple nothing fancy wedding. The only thing that drove cost up was the number of people invited.

I personally am not a big fan of weddings, and aside from marry my wife I could have skipped the whole thing. I don't dance, I wasn't drinking because I had obligations for later that night and with that many people in attendance I pretty much spent the entire reception just hanging with my wife and our bridal party. Everyone else had a GREAT time, and I guess the wedding is as much for the guests as it is the couple.

If I were to do it again I would get married on a beach in Mexico. Spend a week with close familiy and friends, then two more alone with the wife.

For the record, my wife didn't have a Disney picturesque version of the wedding day in her mind. For her (and me) the important part of the wedding was the result, getting married. The big wedding reception and all that went along with it was mostly for the family. If we had been a little older we likely would have done things a lot differently.

Congrats on the wedding by the way, when is it?

 

I have nothing useful to contribute so I'm just going to say congrats Matt

 

In that case, I feel I should let you know that she has been cheating on you pretty much since you first met. Feel free to dump her immediately, though I'd appreciate if you'd PM me her phone number and address first.

 

thanks. september 2010.

I suppose I shouldn't tell you about her love of obscure beers? or that she likes the idea of a keg or two of good quality beer at the reception?

btw, she does have a sister, but she's already married.

 

Pics?

 

assuming you meant the girl and not the kegs...

note the ring, bitches!





also, a shot of where we had dinner last friday.

55 beers on draft, 500 in bottles. oh my. fiancee was sick and couldn't taste any of the awesome beers. we even swung a free round of tasters each selected for us by the beer director. mine was a ten fidy imperial stout special edition--aged in bourbon barrels. oh my again. oh wait, this aint the beer thread.





and also a keg list at the store a half block from my house:
Grocery store, fresh produce, tobacco products. Arlington, VA

 

I like the idea and think it can be done tastefully. I really like the compressor wheel idea, but that would get pricey. Maybe you could find a place that has a bunch of junk turbos (truck turbos would even work) that would give you the junk parts to get blasted. Our reception theme was Movies since we love movies. We had little movie clapper board picture frames with movie posters in them on each table to show the name of the table. Tables were named for the movies we saw together while dating. Our little table for just us was "50 First Dates" and our parents were seated at "Meet the Parents". We had fun with the seating chart...

I found some fun/funny stuff doing an image search on "racing wedding"

 

One last one I thought was pretty funny. A Zombie wedding theme for the really geeky couple...

 

marriage IS a lot like fighting off a zombie horde...

 

the win is strong with this one.

there will be no checkerboard though.

 

Who would have guessed that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is a Dale Earnhardt fan?

I'm diggin the tire tread rings. They are a bit too cheesy for a wedding ring IMO, but if I was into bling I might rock one on my other hand.

 

actually that dude made me think of Allen from The Hangover: