Insp. by the wedding threads...What was your wedding like?

[Strawberry Lemonade]

What was your wedding like? Where did you get married? How big was your wedding party, and most importantly, did you make the bridesmaids wear hideous matching dresses??

DH and I got married 3 years ago. We had a traditional Catholic mass followed by a reception at a local country club. I had 2 maids of honor (sister and best friend) and 3 bridesmaids. And yes, I did put them in matching dresses! DH had 1 best man, 4 groomsman, and 1 jr. groomsman (my teenage cousin). We didn't have a flower girl or a ring bearer because we didn't know any kids who were the appropriate age.

We opted for a buffet dinner (which I loved...more choices for everyone and if you don't like something, you can help yourself to a different meal!) We had about 160 people attend - only because that is all the country club would hold. We (and especially my MIL) would have invited more people if space permitted.

All in all, it was the best wedding I ever attended. (Not that I'm biased or anything.)

 

[HollyJoy]

DH and I got married in a beautiful church... our reception was at a local Hotel that had a grand ballroom... very pretty. Yes, my bridesmaids wore matching dresses, but I don't think they were hideous! LOL We also had a buffet, for the reception was mid afternoon. We had about 120 people in attendance.

 

[pjlla]

Gorgeous wedding, if I may say so myself! Traditional Protestant church wedding on a lovely afternoon in May. The weather was spectacular.

I wore a pink gown instead of the traditional white (being a blonde I don't look great in white), although it was a very typical wedding gown style (long with a train). My DH wore a traditional black double breasted tuxedo.

My attendants all wore tea length cotton floral "garden party" type dresses. DH's attendants wore matching tuxes.

We had a violinist along with the traditional church organ, but opted for no soloist.

Flowers were all pink and white.

It was such a beautiful day! .....................P

 

[tar heel]

Got married at 3 p.m. in a beautiful church -- traditional protestant church wedding with dh's brother officiating. Had about 200 guests. Had really wonderful music b/c dh is a musician and some of our closest friends are, too. Four bridesmaids, four groomsmen. No ring bearer or flower girl b/c I didn't want some little kid getting all the attention! (That's really what I said, too.) Reception was at a nearby historic house, most of which is an art gallery -- fantastic place for a reception and only one party gets to book it each day. For the most part, food (not a complete meal but finger foods) was inside and guests were outside.

BTW, my bridesmaids dressed almost alike. I didn't think they were awful at the time, but I would now. My matron of honor was my best friend from childhood and she was very large and also quite pregnant, so her dress was specially made from fabric we ordered from the company that did the dresses. I had not intended to ask her to be in the wedding since our lives had gone in totally different directions plus she was pregnant. Found out that she really expected to be and was going to be very hurt if I didn't. How she was going to look seemed like a really big deal a at the time, and I wasn't very happy about feeling cornered. You know, it didn't matter a bit in the long run!

 

[Blondie]

I got married back in the stone ages (1980) and had a full Catholic mass wedding, 5 bridesmaids and 5 groomsmen, all wore color corodinating attire (as in matching dresses and matching tuxes).

We had a 4 hour sit down dinner reception at a restaurant with a 4 hour open bar serving everything from wine to vodka. DJ's weren't big back then, so we had a live band. If my memory serves I think there were 140 people, give or take a few.

 

[TheOtherVillainess]

Fairly traditional wedding at my mom's church. She would've killed me if we'd had it anywhere else. I remember it like it was yesterday instead of 5 1/2 years ago......

Beautiful, not too sunny, not too chilly Sunday Feb 14...5 pm. I should've known there were going to be a few mishaps when the organist forgot to play "Sunrise, Sunset", which was part of the pre-wedding music we'd chosen.

My sister (maid of honor)ripped her hose with her newly done acrylic nails and had to run to Kmart 20 min pre-wedding to buy new ones.

In getting the cake from their house to the church, my ILs managed to accidentally cause the bottom layer to crack in half and fall apart when they were setting it up. My stepsister is a former cake decorator and managed to beg some white icing off the local Albertson's bakery and 'glue' the cake back together with icing and plastic coffee stirrers.

During the ceremony, my nephew (ring bearer) can't seem to keep still and the best man has to literally hold him in place to keep him from running amok.

The pastor gets to the part where he does some sort of blessing of the rings and places the rings inside his giant bible. At that point, he drops my ring and it rolls around on the floor.

Just after the ceremony, we are standing there taking pictures when my niece (flower girl) says to her mom that she's missing one of her plastic clip on earrings. I move out of the way so they can look for it and I hear a distinctive crunch beneath my heel. I crushed the beads.

My mother decided she wanted to pick out what we were going to have on the small buffet at the reception. Fine. DH and I had paid for the wedding, the least I could do was let her do the buffet. My mother decided she HAD to have little smokies in bbq sauce. Ended up with a few guests with sauce dripping on their outfit.

My father (may he rot in agony!) decides to show up. I was kind of shocked he was there...I didn't even know if he knew I was getting married as I hadn't talked to him in many months. He shows up and is totally plastered AND bombed from dope AND wearing these contacts that make his pupils totally white.

Some of DH's friends had tied tin cans and painted stuff all over his car. I don't get why people do this. It looks so STUPID!

But other than that...everything went ok. It was a smallish wedding and we were happy with it, even though I'm sure DMIL was not impressed. Oh well..we weren't there to impress her. We were there to get married!

TOV

 

[disneyatl]

My wedding was...gosh...13 years ago. It was beautiful. We got married in a church. I had 4 bridesmaids and 4 groomsmen, no flower girl or ring bearer. Bridesmaids wore royal blue tea length dresses, which at the time I thought were beautiful. Looking at the now....what was I thinking!! My dress, however, was gorgeous and I still think it was. It was a white satin dress with a long train. Our wedding was a typical Southern Baptist wedding (which means no alcohol). Our reception was in the reception hall of the church. I guess you could call it buffet style. We had about 150 guests.

 

[monkeyboy]

Preacher, me, her, her dad and his shotgun

 

[scarlett873]

my first wedding was the traditional kind...church, matching bridesmaids, reception, etc...that marriage didn't last! lol


but my second wedding was perfect! originally, we were going to get married in vegas at the venetian. but i found this amazing deal for a disney vacation and DH said that if i could find us a place to get married and stick to our budget, we'd do it. MISSION!!! lol...so i found a lovely little chapel in kissimmee. it ended up being just the two of us. very intimate and exactly the way we wanted it. no hoopla...no fanfair...no fighting over anything wedding related with family/friends. the most important thing to us was being married. we'd waited far too long for that moment!! my mom made my dress for me. very simple...he wore a suit...i made my bouquet...we wrote our vows...chose the music...and everything fell perfectly into place!

 

[EsmeraldaX]

Originally posted by monkeyboy
Preacher, me, her, her dad and his shotgun

Really? Cause I picture this :

 

[mickeyboat]

Got married 12 years ago in a Catholic ceremony in front of about 75 people. Reception at a local country club.

Highlights:

Fire alarm went off at the hotel where we were staying the morning of our wedding. We evacuated the bulding- but my dad said he would go back in and rescue my dress if the building was really burning.

DH arrived with his groomsmen at the church to find a bat flying around. They trapped the beast in a collection basket, slid a hymnal underneath it, and released it outside.

My parents had celebrated their 25th anniversary a week before and they renewed their vows at my ceremony and danced a special dance at the reception (BTW they were divorced 5 years later).

Three bridesmaids, all dressed in the same gown. Looking back the dresses were probably hideous. FIL was the best man.

My little brother (then 11) wore a tux, walked the mothers down the aisle, and was furious that he didn't get to sit at the head table.

We had an absolute blast! The dj was teriffic and kept us dancing well into the evening. The party continued at MIL's house afterwards but we slipped away quitely to a secret location.

What fond memories of such a special day. Thanks for letting me share.

Denae

 

[RadioNate]

We got married at WDW. Yep the bridesmaids matched (well same color of dress but different styles) but the dresses were only $25 and come to think of it I bought them!

Our reception was at the American Adventure Pavillion with about 100 people.

We were oiginally planning a intimate wedding but my grandfather, who was very ill at the time, wanted to see his only grandchild married so he gave us a big chuck on change to spend on a wedding (and a wedding only!) He passed not long after so I'm we did it "his" way.

We had a short ceremony in the wedding pavillion and then were bussed to Epcot where we watched Illuminations. Dinner was served family style so there were lots of choices, then we had a DJ and dancing until nearly 2am!

 

[onecoolmama]

I hade a huge wedding, huge wedding party. My girls wore matching dresses, but I can honestly tell you they all liked them. The Jr bridesmaids wore a dress from I think Hecths and the flower girls both wore theirs for their first communion, and I picked them up from Macys on sale for $25. Not bad at all.

We got married in a beautiful Church and we had a sit down reception. Everyone danced and laughed.

As my gift to my wedding party, I took them all to an amusement park for the day. (my party ranged from 25-6) so everyone was relatively young and they all had a blast.


My dress I got off the rack for 800, but I think i redesigned the entire dress (or close to it) so that the final cost was a lot more

 

[ead79]

Mine was much like RadioNate's. My wedding was last December at WDW. My ceremony was at the Wedding Pavilion. We each had four attendants--the girls wore matching red dresses and the guys all wore tails. We then had our pre-reception at Epcot's Italy Isola where we watched Illuminations. After that our reception was in the American Adventure Rotunda. Our food was served at stations (e.g. pasta station, carving station, etc.) and we had a non-alcoholic bar so we could serve Diet Coke. We had a wonderful wedding day, and I'm so glad we did it at Disney.

 

[lilpritch04]

This is still so fresh in my mind!

We had our ceremony and reception at the Great Hall in St Paul, MN--a gorgeous ball room with wrought iron balcony and chandeliers and black marble on the floor! It was perfect!

My parents paid for the ceremony and reception for 250 people--but we were on a tight budget for that turnout! We had a 7pm ceremony on a Friday night with a receiving line/social hour in the balcony while they changed around the ballroom seating and the DJ set up. We had butler passed and buffet hors d'oeuvres around 9pm and danced until midnight.

My aunt married us, so that was very special; and my grandfather is a retired pastor, so he read the nuptual blessing. We each had 4 attendants. I had 2 MOHs and DH had one BM--his twin brother. We used red in just about everything--so the BMs had apple red dresses in the same style and the GM wore black tuxes with red vests and ties (not bow ties). DH had a champagne colored vest and tie. I think the BM dresses were lovely and very flattering for the variety of body types, but I'm not kidding myself--they will never wear them again.

Daisies are my favorite flower, so they were on the invites, programs, and used as flowers throughout--along with red roses in my bouquet.

Our actual ceremony was a traditional Lutheran ceremony and about 1/2 hour long. The reception was just a lot of fun! Many people commented on how organized everything was and that it was so much fun.

Because I still love showing people, my wedding pics can be seen at www.imageevent.com/kpoelzer/weddingphotos
Not all of our prof ones have been uploaded--about 250 more to go, but our friends have posted pics there too.

In my completely unbiased opinion--it was the best wedding ever!!!

One thing that was kind of unique, we weren't in a church so there is nothing blocking the view when the bride comes down the aisle. I wanted a bit of drama, so we had our 4 ushers walk in front of my dad and I until we reached the actual aisle. It was great and people loved the effect!

Good times!
Katie Mae

 

[liznboys]

We got married in a pretty, modern Catholic Church. The reception was in my mom and stepdads backyard (turned out to be a gorgeous day to be outside!!!) We had about 75 people there. It wasn't too big, although looking back we would have done it even smaller (as in a group of 15 of us on a beach somewhere then dinner at a nice restaurant afterwards!!) I'm not into big weddings.

 

[caitycaity]

another disney bride, checking in.

we had a late afternoon wedding at the wedding pavilion, followed by an early evening reception in the living seas VIP room. one whole wall was windows out to the giant aquarium. it was really cool! our cake was decorated with faux seashells and coral to go with the sea theme. it was really beautiful. we had a meditteranean buffet.

we had 4 bridesmaids and 4 groomsmen. about 60 people came. the bridesmaids wore matching dresses, but they were NOT hideous. in fact, i got a lot of compliments on them. i would have liked to buy the dress for me, just to have as a formal dress! they were a dark lavender.

having it at disney was the best decision we made. people who went are still talking about how great it was.

 

[Strawberry Lemonade]

Gorgeous pictures, Katie Mae! I wore red in my sister's wedding and it was really quite striking.

My bridesmaids all wore blue gowns that changed color depending on the angle - sometimes they looked blue, sometimes gray, and sometimes purple. My official "colors" were purple, blue, and silver.

Here's another question...On groomsmen in formalwear - did you have bow ties, regular ties, or something else. We went with regular ties. Not big fans of the bowtie!

 

[tkyes]

We had a traditional wedding. Church wedding, reception at a golf course. 4 bridesmaids, 4 groomsman, a flower girl and ring bearer. I would guess around 175 - 200 guests, I don't remember the exact number.

We had a sit down dinner and a DJ. The girls did wear matching dresses, periwinkle blue, but I think they were only $70. We got the flower girls dress around easter time for $15. The flowers were mixed colors, periwinkle, purple, hot pink, yellow, white.

We did have tornado watches all through the area and the sky was a deep blue / black color off in the distance when we left the church. We managed to avoid getting rained on though.

One of my favorite things was the cake - I loved my wedding cake! It had 2 white layers, and a chocolate layer both with raspberry mousse and fresh raspberries with a buttercream frosting.

 

[huey duey & luey]

I had a 3 pm mass in a catholic church. Followed by a cocktail hour then a sit down reception in a country club for about 200 people. I had seven bridesmaids( yes they all wore the same dress, but I think they were pretty . I also had a flower girl. It was beautiful a perfect day
Tara