how do i shot wedding and marriage

just as long as your values include an open bar

there will definitely, without a doubt, be no "first dance". that sounds like the least enjoyable thing that could ever happen in a life

We were married downtown at the Baltimore courthouse. The only witnesses were our son and my father-in-law. We were all kinda biz-caz. My kid was wearing a Tony Hawk hoodie. After, we went to a diner and had spanakopita or whatever. Then we went and bought rings in a strip-mall out on route 40. We have not gotten around to merging all of the accounts and stuff, or even legally changing her last name, because what a hassle, you know?

Married people: did you have a joint bank account before you were married? Does anyone keep this seperate even WHEN married? What are the benefits/drawbacks of each?

Marriage number 1: his/hers/ours accounts. Worked fine. Significantly different incomes, so we each put in same % (not dollar amount) into the ours, which went to common expenses like rent, etc.
Marriage number 2: one account. Also works fine. But was a royal pain in the ass to consolidate, especially all of the various and sundry bits of 401(k)s we had accumulated over multiple employers each. We are more or less equivalent in income and spending habits, which helps. If there is a significant differential in either, the his/her/ours model is one I very, very strongly recommend.

changing name: no

his/hers/ours seems like a great idea

Yeah, that was great. Never ever had arguments about money, ever, which can be a big prob if you have different spending habits (even if consummate with income differences). Also:

Marriage number 1: wanted wedding to be what we wanted. When (my) family were pains in the ass about it, we did the courthouse thing and then got the families together for a dinner at a nice restaurant a couple of weeks later. It was fine for us, but parents were totally bummed that they were not there.

Marriage number 1: older, questionably wiser. My family learned the lesson from marriage number 1 and were just delighted to be there, no interference. Had the wedding at our (small) house, which was very effective in giving us complete and utter control of the very small guest list. Decided that our priority was getting the families (who had never met) together, period. Guest list limited to parents, siblings of parents (aka our first-degree aunts and uncles, with spouses), our own sibs (with SOs, thankfully we only have one sib each), and would-kill-for friends, ten total. So about 35 people, many of whom I will never see again until funerals TBRR. Drinks and cheese at the house after, then walked down the hill for a nice dinner in a private room. Mission accomplished, had a work colleague do photos and never really bothered looking at them--just sent CDs to the parents. Mission accomplished. Blissfully happy (truly).

Another scenario that dear friends did: courthouse ceremony with only parents and siblings in attendance (with spouses). Had a photog take courthouse pics; they selected a really lovely nice shot and included a print in the invitation to mega party months later, at their (large) place in DC. Immediate family and the friends who had flown in from out of town (as far as Tokyo!) invited to a dinner the night before at a Himalayan restaurant--anyone who asked about registry was directed to a honeymoon website for contributions toward their Nepal honeymoon. Great party (catered, with hired bartender) the next evening, then everyone left late-night was issued a drink ticket to a nearby bar so they would gtfo. Excellent plan and execution, everyone had a blast, including bride and groom.

Oh and for wedding #2 I had a killer red dress made in exactly my favorite kind of style and wore a black fascinator with a bit of black veil. Whole thing, custom-made in gorgeous silk, cost under $400 bucks and I have since worn the dress to like a billion weddings/other cocktail-attire events and break out the fascinator every year for a great Derby party that we attend.

"how do i shot wedding and marriage"

wait, did you really want to know how to shot marriage too? cuz that's a whooooooole other weird thing. may god have mercy on your soul.......

yeah wedding and marriage have only the most barely tangential of relationships ime

lol, you guys are all awesome.

we got married by some lady we found online, in our apartment, with family and v v close friends present. pat played the harp. then we took everyone who was at the wedding out to lunch, and then had a party at a bar later for all our friends & our family. this way our families got to be there for the intimate/special part, and it wasn't in a courthouse, but everyone still go to hang out together later. it was quite nice imo.

my family is a BIT bigger than hers, but none of us has tons of family. it helps that a lot of her family are far away, so just her sister & her sister's husband and their kids came. but all my family are nearby and if i was gonna just invite my mom/dad/sister i kinda had to invite the grandparents, and then the aunts and cousins... but it still wasn't huge. ymmv with this. if we had a backyard, we prob would have gotten married there.

i went out and bought a suit to get married in and promptly changed out of it into shorts & t-shirt cuz it was 100 degrees in august. still have never worn that suit a second time.

we still have separate bank accounts though... maybe we should consolidate.

i am certain i will have questions about marriage too that's why i included it in the title! iirc my banking q falls under that category

marriage advice totes welcome

But I don't like to give nonspecific advice! It makes me feel like a pontificating asshole. As for the finances q, we do hers/his/ours accounts and it works great for us.

our wedding was mostly paid for by my wife's dad and we were compelled to have a somewhat hippie Jewish ceremony ( the halfway pt between what my FIL would have wanted and what we wanted, one on hand a scenario wherein I converted and attended temple every day with him and on the other a completely religion free whiskey soaked boozy event.) anyway it was great. We even managed to sneak the pogues' "whiskey you're the devil" as the second part of the hora. And the dj was great.

My advice is make sure you eat your fill of food before you have your fill of drink (it's easy to forget to eat after the wedding) and take a few minutes after its official to wander off and alone time with just the two of you. Like do it right between walking off and beginning the reception. Just five min to chill and process. Also if you don't invite kids that's cool, not a big deal. I don't think anyone would or should take offense.

Congratulations obv!

not so much sweeping grandiose advice about big picture stuff. more like "pro tips". haw. like the his/hers/ours accounts - that's a good one. but mostly i will ask stuff as it occurs to me i guess

hippie jewish ceremony sounds p fun!

we're in the process of combining accounts. i rly don't think i can be trusted to manage his/hers/ours at this point in my life. she's a good check on me :)

Here's what we did, and do—take as much or as little from this as you like.

We were married on a Friday evening in June by the mayor of a town neither of us grew up in, on 10 days' notice (that's how long it took for our blood tests and paperwork to be processed). I was 21, she was 20. In attendance: Her parents, my dad and stepmother, my brother, and two friends of ours who we don't talk to anymore. Her parents paid for the rings; afterward, my dad took us all out to dinner, then we went home, which was my wife's room in her parents' apartment. (We got our own place a month or so later.) We both went back to our crappy retail jobs the next day.

We have a joint bank account, and a single credit card (we had multiple cards in the past, but paid them off and cancelled them). For a while now I've been the only one of us working, though there have been times when we've both had jobs. We don't have any kids, a factor I honestly think has been crucial in preserving the relationship and our mutual sanity. We celebrated our 20th anniversary a little under two weeks ago.

I guess I have an idea -- we put all mutual expenses (housing & utilities excluded) on shared cc that we pay off every month. It's a way of tracking expenses, reaping max rewards for spending, and sharing responsibility. Once we used the cash back from the cc to buy a new computer.

the biggest ongoing argument my wife and i had over the years was about bunting. i held that while there is in general too much bunting, a major league professional baseball player should be able to bunt and know where to bunt in a given situation. she felt that it was more difficult than that and that players are not suitably practiced in the process. i mentioned that from a young age when taking batting practice i was made to bunt toward first base and then toward third before being allowed to swing away. she thought my experience was irrelevant to the conversation. also she is a yankee fan.

anyway, i trust that you and yr groom will be better about these things. phillies tho, jeez

well we're in different leagues so we don't fight about baseball that often tbh

phils/sox

we disagree on whether or not "elegant" is an appropriate adjective to describe tim lincecum's pitching style

<3

my wife has a tim lincecum obsession, ever since she saw him pitch in the 2010 World Series. she has always had a bit of a "thing" for hesher dudes.

suggestions:
- invite bill steer tim lincecum to perform the ceremony

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wbo-FBLdMH8

fwiw my take on the "what we want" vs. "what family wants" is that it should be something like 70/30 or 75/25 or even 80/20, unless you hate your/his family with justification in which case fuck them. If you're bothering to have a wedding at all, you're kind of conceding that you're having something that's not "just" about you imo.

You can have fun with it, though. We were married in a church (MIL paid for a large amount) but I walked down the aisle to a Modest Mouse song, carrying a bouquet made out of hair clips! I did not get a child in a bear costume to be my "ring bear" however. Compromises!

but i also feel like i might not feel strongly enough about the traditions themselves to really take a stand and refuse to participate in them (what they represent, yes, i feel very strongly - the traditions, idk, they feel detached from their origins in some cases).

this is how they get you

obv its not "just" "about" us but its planned to our taste and not someone else's

i mean if it was just about me i would marry myself and invite no one. it's shitty to try to convince someone they're being selfish by staying true to themselves with their wedding imo!

(btw ned knows how to shot things)

!! <3

it's shitty to try to convince someone they're being selfish by staying true to themselves with their wedding imo!

I don't want to belabor this unnecessarily but I guess I don't even know what it means to be "true to yourself" at your wedding -- a wedding isn't a self-expressive activity! I mean, obviously, you shouldn't have a wedding where you pretend to be Hindu if you're not Hindu, but I don't feel like that's what you mean. If somebody invite your whole family to your wedding and serve them food you know they won't like because it's "truly them," that really is selfish imo. But I don't actually think you're planning to do that! I think "courthouse with fam and then a decent fam friendly reception, with depraved metal party to follow" sounds awesome.

also, at least for us, joint bank accounts and everything done jointly immediately upon marriage but not before. taxes filed jointly, no oversight by either of us over what the other chooses to spend, just all one pot out of which we draw as needed.

The thing sunny and I argue about most is whether the letter 'y' can act as a vowel or not. I won't say which one of us is on which side of the argument since the person who thinks 'y' is never a vowel would be shamed forever. But that said, one of us will also vouch for 'w' even being a vowel sometimes as well.

Also the money. Good lord the money.

If "y" cannot be a vowel then "rhythm" must be a voweless word.

^^ Apparently that shoud be spelled "vowelless".

My number one suggestion abt weddings is that if somebody wants to do/pay for something, let them. The only roadblocks we had wrt stuff for ours were trying to nobly refuse charity and then dealing with bummed out parent etc damage control, which disappeared one we were like "yeah fine, pay for the booze/invitations/whatever.

Also

1. Make your own mix. You know what people will deal with, and what sorta classic stuff you are down with that will please the olds.
2. Get on top of your venue, and watch for bullshit charges for stuff like cake-cutting etc. Rent/bring your own PA. Find a venue that allows you to bring in your own booze. Avoid anywhere that charges you stupid $$$ for keg fees, or preferably avoid them by buying everything in cans/bottles. Make sure the venue knows that you are taking any left over cans/bottles/booze with you when you leave, and assign somebody to do that, because what's up dope honeymoon/recovery week/bacchanalia. Make sure you can return unopened wine/champagne. Seriously. Do this.
3. Assign someone to do all the shit you think you are going to do at the end of the night. Because you won't. This includes loading up gifts/cake/edible leftovers/flowers/booze/cleanup/cake toppers/whatever.
4. Make someone with a car responsible for getting you back to wherever you are staying. No passengers or hanger ons allowed. Don't trust the goddamn hotel shuttle. You will feel like a dick standing outside the venue wondering if they forgot about you or bailing while uncle joe is trying to tell you how good you look, because they don't show up on time. EVER.

the biggest ongoing argument my wife and i had over the years was about bunting. i held that while there is in general too much bunting

Thought you meant
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_p4PTL1wC-QQ/THO9D6KAIgI/AAAAAAAAAmY/R9Bz6ct5TX8/s1600/bunting.jpg

Eephus, please. I am not going to purposefully make people eat food that only I like. I hope that you are just willfully misunderstanding me at this point tbh

To "be true to yourself at your wedding" in my case means not to have my father "give me away" to my husband just because his family wants to see it. Etc. Obviously, I would think, if you've read this thread

how about you compromise and have a father-daughter dance to "Give It Away" by RHCP

best wedding I've ever been to: bride and groom getting married at the registry office with just family in the afternoon, then have a dinner for everyone that night

cocktails were included and I made it through three long island iced teas before the entrees got served, so there was no way that it was going to be anything less than awesome

however, the christian parents of the groom left relatively early on after early-90s songs that hinted at sex got a spin after dessert was served

3. a great photographer is pretty important imo. it's a special day - why the hell else are you having a party?? - and it should be documented for posterity. find a photographer that will take the kinds of photos you want. i think our photographer was about 90% of the money we spent on our wedding.

this is the one thing we really cheapassed ourselves out of and I don't wanna be too harsh on mother imago but yeah seriously make sure it's someone who at least knows about light levels, shutter speed and focusing

It's ok, Darragh - i'll have double strawboys at mine to make up for it.

Congrats Sharivari.

Why not try a basic setup? Some bread and cheese and fine white wine.

Oh I never really posted about this.

We away and married late last year after eleven years together. Civil ceremony, two witnesses and nobody else. Drinks, lunch, change clothes, taxi, plane, few phonecalls, social media post of 'hi everyone we got married see ye in a week'. Went like a charm tbh.

We had anticipated problems with one of her parents in particular, her choice was to let them know only a few weeks in advance that we were doing it that way. On her lead, we dropped it fairly brutally on them in person and then after a few excruciating minutes we jogged on our way, being advised en route not to darken door again for a while.

Radio silence apart from a few proxy attempts early on through her brother to do it properly - mass, decent notice period, big bash with all relatives and neighbours and what have you. Other than that no parental contact for her for a few months, not til well after the deed was done in fact.

Everyone else was thrilled for us, so all in all it wasn't a bad effort. I recommend. Any questions?