I spoke with a bride today who said she would like something very small and intimate and her husband-to-be wanted a big event. As you might imagine being a Celebrant when I married I wanted to have a big event and my husband-to-be wanted a small intimate event. The bride suggested my husband and she should get together and talk and I and her fiancée should talk.
So how do you get to a wedding plan that will suit you and your partner?
From what brides say I believe many partners are happy to say yes if it is what their partner who is organising the wedding wants.
In our case it was a compromise! We had a wedding in my parent’s garden with a gazebo borrowed from a cousin. We had a catering company come in and serve food. We had immediate family which gave us a gathering of about 20 people. David and I went off to Lincoln University to get wedding photos taken. We used my sister and David’s brother as witnesses and our Dog no longer with us had a beautiful purple ribbon around his collar to match my purple wedding dress.
We then went from Lincoln off to the Ladbrooks Hall where we had a band and supper organised and friends and other family came for a New Years Eve Party. We had used our extended family to decorate the hall. It wasn’t until they arrived they realised that we had in fact got married. We had a great night and a limo took us off for the night to Chateau on the Park. The next day we all came to the hall to clean up and then back to my parents at Lincoln for a post-match lunch!
So our wedding was a low cost event more from the need to meet my husband’s desire not to stand up in front of huge numbers of people.
There was no expectations, no stress.
The night before my husband had his friends from Auckland and their children to keep him company. I had a quiet night with my Mum and Dad.
“Happy Anniversary darling – you have supported me through some very tough times and I love you even more than I did on our wedding day. We are so lucky to have a beautiful daughter with a very determined personality (not sure where she gets that from!) I know I am extremely hard to buy for as I really do have everything I need right here and right now. I hope you like your vacuum cleaner and reading book which are your anniversary gifts from me”.
(I spoke with a woman today (31.12.13) who told me that 20 years ago today she met her husband and have been together since then. Comment below on how you think they met!)