Writing Workshop Wednesday

From Mama's Losin It. I picked prompt #2, "If you could do your wedding over, how would you do it?
(Inspired by this tweet “I am watching TLC’s wedding shows and this makes me want to get married again. Same groom but a totally different ceremony."

I think the simple answer is that we would have skipped the whole wedding and gone to Vegas, like we did with our vow renewal this year. Elvis was the least complicated of our ceremonies.

As a background, Steven and I managed to get married THREE times. The first was a quickie courthouse ceremony because I no longer had insurance and had a nasty case of bronchitis. The second was our actual wedding, which we had been planning for two years, at that point, and then we opted to renew our vows when we took an anniversary trip to Las Vegas.

With our wedding, we spent a lot of time worrying about budget and trying to do the right thing. We planned out just south of Boston wedding on a budget of 6000$. The average wedding around that area is, I believe, around 21k, so we started out, basically, at a loss. This translated to a lot of extra work for us to make sure we could stretch every single dollar. What also made it a tough time was that my mother was diagnosed with cancer in January 2006. Two months before my wedding, she had reconstructive surgery and we weren't sure exactly what would happen.

There were definitely things we did right. As much as I griped about it, I enjoyed making all the floral arrangements, including handwiring my bouquet. Because we used silks, I did not have to worry about preserving it and, if Hieronymus wants to use it if she gets married, she will be able to. Instant keepsake. We also didn't have to worry about if the flowers would wilt in the December cold. Making centrepieces definitely also gave my mother a good project while she was recovering and bored. 

I loved our chapel and our reverend. We paid 60$ to get married less than 1000 feet from the Atlantic Ocean in a beautiful little stone chapel and our reverend was a friend who I'd met on LiveJournal. We were able to have our friends and family help us decorate the night before and it was a chance to get to see everyone before things were insane the next day. I actually also loved our reception site, which was a local hall. It definitely wasn't as polished if as if we'd had it in a hotel, but we had the freedom to decorate however we wanted. We also had amazing catering.

Now, for what I would change. I would have, first and foremost, cut budget elsewhere and hired a better photographer. We used a friend in exchange for being able to use our photos and because of a series of misfortunate events including a dead flash, we have very few good pictures of our wedding. We lost or missed photos of our belly dancer, us cutting the cake, our entrance, and a lot of the middle of the reception. A lot of the photos are dark and off-coloured or out of focus. The bright side of this is that I am good with Photoshop, but it would have been nice to have an album straight-out. 

I would have eaten at the place we had our rehearsal before we went there. Food was crap.

This big thing I would have changed was we would have invited fewer family and more of our friends. My mother-in-law, in the months before our wedding, became increasingly belligerent about our marriage, as well as things she didn't approve of in the wedding. We had fights about our ceremony (mainly non-denomination because I am Catholic and he is Jewish), our decor, the food, where we had our rehearsal dinner, and how she was to be announced because SHE WAS IMPORTANT. A month out, she felt the need to phone up my mother and list all the reasons she didn't like me. The day of our wedding, she showed up over three hours late, refused to be in pictures or allow my father-in-law to be in them, and spent the little time she was at the reception saying crappy things and complaining. I would have not tried to be nice, keep the peace, and told her not to bother coming at all. 

But that's not why you're slogging through this post. You're here because you want to see pictures of what we'd do, right?

This dress, much less ornate than my original, but vintagey. Why this? Because as much as I loved my wedding gown, my tastes are different now and honestly, because it was very heavy and I was too hot, even in December.

Birdcage veil. I wore one that I made for our vow renewal in Vegas and would definitely opt to make my own again.

Feathered comb. I would probably go with peacock feathers, though, and again, I would make my own. I have a lovely one I wore to a friend's wedding last year that would also work nicely. It would also be a nice splash of colour.

In royal blue, of course. I loved our original colours of royal blue, silver, and white and would definitely not change it. I actually loved our original dresses, but this would fit better with a vintage theme.

This is my original bouquet, but hey, I like it, so this would stay the same. I am very proud of having made that myself, thanks.

And, of course, totally keeping that GQMF for the groom. After all, I did marry him three times, I might as well.