To all you married Ukesters! Any advice?

Starby

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I have to work in the morning but my wedding brain is in full gear mercilessly forcing me to think of every detail of my wedding which is only a little over two months away! I'm SOOOO excited for the wedding. Everything I'm thinking about is really joyous but I seriously need some sleep!

So I figured I would get up to write a list of everything I'm thinking about so maybe my brain can unload and shut down for a while. While I'm at it though, I wondered about all you married Ukesters and what kind of weddings you all had.

What do you know now that you wish you had known then? What was your favorite part of your wedding? What kind of music did you have at the ceremony?? (I'm having quite a bit of uke-ing in mine!) What is worth the hassle and what do you think you could have done without?

Ah, Love.
 
Writing things down is good way to get some of the worries out.

As far as advice, the best I can say is: less is more. Don't spend piles of money - it won't make your marriage or your memories any better.

Don't have an emcee when a simple DJ will do. Skip that hokey stuff with the garter too, unless you are really attached to that part. It's embarrassing and pointless.

Do have something the whole family can participate in if you can. At my family's weddings we all stand in a circle around the newly married couple at the reception and sing "That's Amore" (the Dean Martin version). We play the Dean Martin song over the PA so we have backup, and pass out sheets with the lyrics so everyone can sing along. The memories of singing this at my cousins weddings are some of the best memories for all of us.
 
I am married, and I am a Marriage and Family Therapist.....all I can offer is that there is a BIG difference between a wedding and a marriage......try not to forget that no matter what you plan or do at the wedding, no matter who comes, or what goes right or wrong, it is important to keep a focus on the start of your marriage!

Good luck, be kind, loving, and giving to one another! If you can do that, the wedding will be great!
 
My wife and I got married at a pond shaped like a heart, by a justice of peace. No family or friends just the two people that needed to be there. We did have a party eventually but the act of getting married was simple.
 
I got married on Halloween of '08... it was a spiritual ceremony- no real religious ties, and a costume ball reception. We had about 85 guests.

-Organization will set you free. Mind you, I said organization, not micromanagement :) Big difference.
-Don't forget to check the internet for deals... You can save a lot of money sometimes by comparing prices.
-Don't worry about pleasing anyone but yourself and your intended- You'll never please everyone, so just worry about the people that matter!
-Make sure you have fun the day of... don't stress yourself to pieces right before and during...

And finally...
-Take time to eat during your reception. You might have to fight for the time, but eat as much as you can :) I had exactly one bite of my wedding cake, which was delicious, but I don't remember anything about it... Unfortunately, thats all I got. :( I shoulda had more- hehe.
 
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Been married for 17 yrs now, and have definitely had my ups and downs. What I can say about the big ceremony (double wedding with my sister) is that we worried so much about every detail that I don't even remember much about the day. I spent too much time worrying about food and flowers and where everything should go that the day went by and it was a blur...

If I did it again. I would completely simplify and save all the money for the parents retirement, kids education, house etc.. it was excessive and too darn stressful. It really is about the bond and the celebration and not perfection (no such thing)

Best of luck to you... slow down and enjoy this time... it's so precious and goes by so fast!
 
We got married, just the two of us, on Kapalua beach in Maui. Barefoot. It was the best wedding we could have ever asked for. :D

Not everyone can do that because of family obligations, but it worked for us.
 
I'm married recently enough to still consider myself a newlywed, but I'll agree with the above. Having this or that flowers or this or that cake doesn't make you any more or less married than you'd otherwise be!

The only thing that has to happen on that day is the two of you say your vows and get married. That's the whole point. Everything else--and I mean everything else--is really just fluff when you think about it. Don't lose focus on what's most important about the day.

Anyway, our wedding planning definitely had its stressful moments and arguments. That's just how it goes. Wedding are great proving grounds. :) In the end, everything worked out great. Even the weather cooperated.

What worked for us was simplifying. There was not a single thing we streamlined/simplified/omitted that we later regretted doing. (I could've handled even more simplification, but it was a southern wedding and you can only pare those down so much!)

We didn't have a big wedding party. My sister was her matron of honor and her brother was my best man. We though this was a great way to represent the joining of two families. That was it... no bridesmaids or groomsmen or ring bearers or any of that, and no hurt feelings because so-and-so didn't get picked for such-and-such! No spending tons of money on gifts for dozens of wedding participants either.

For the ceremony, it was all the pastor. No guest readings. No unity candle (not allowed in the historic church we were in anyway). No meditation music. Short and sweet and let's kiss the bride and get outta here! :) The processional and recessional music was all the church organist. We're both musicians, so we picked out the selections ourselves (we kept it classical).

Once we found out what a limo costs, we just had the brother cart us out to the reception in his pickup truck. It was a hoot.

Now, as groom, I didn't really get too much say in anything. My job was just to say "yes" and show up wearing whatever tux was picked out for me. But I did insist on live music at the reception. As I said, we're both musicians and we've both played a lot of gigs (including weddings). Music is very important to both of us. At some points in my life, gig money was putting food on the table. I would've felt like I was betraying some part of myself if we went with a DJ.

So we went with a jazz quartet. Drums, upright bass, piano, saxophone, all playing the classic standards. It was the perfect size/vibe/loudness for the venue where we had the reception. No ukuleles were played, but I did sit in with the band on piano at one point and play an impromptu song for my new bride ("When I Fall in Love").

One thing that really worked well for us was not planning a big, complicated honeymoon directly after the wedding. It's bad enough planning and coordinating and worrying (and paying for) a wedding. To then have to fool with packing for a long trip, getting the passports together, plane tickets, hotel reservations, etc.... all on top of the wedding stuff... it really would've been too much. So we took a "breather" day off after the wedding to give us time to settle in and regroup. Then the next day we just drove out to a small, very romantic little hideaway for a couple of nights. (We'll probably do the "big" European honeymoon thing later on.)

JJ
 
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My wife and I have weird familys. Mine is all about big weddings and family drama, oh and having Catholic weddings. My wifes family is jewish and cool with what ever, but is small. My family, the people I would HAVE to invite, would out number them 10 to 1. also my family is all about the big chicago wedding that costs $100k+. that was not for us at all.
So we decided a date, booked a flight to Maui, got the wedding planner in Maui to make sure we knew what we needed and to make sure there was a person to marry us and a person to take pictures. We told our families 2 days before we left.
It was perfect. it was my wife, me, the Hawaiian princess who married us, and the photographer, all on a cliff over lookign the ocean. We needed nothing else.
We never had a reception or registered anywhere. we made it about us.
the best part was that we got married and were on our honeymoon 5 minutes later.
The funny thing is that 5 years after I started playing ukulele.

Moral of the story. It is about you. screw everyone else. if you like star trek or civil war reenacting, go for it. It is the best day to fly your freak flag.
Just be nice to everyone around you. they all want to make sure that it is the best and most special day possible
 
Got married at the Nashville courthouse and had a big party and potluck in the UWC field that evening.

Don't forget to have fun and don't freak out if everything isn't perfect (because there is always something)
 
Be organized and have fun.

I was talking to a guy this morning about weddings. He is a father of a groom. I am a mother of a groom. We are both helping our kids pay for the weddings. Know the difference? He is chipping in $18,000 (yes, eighteen thousand) for his son's wedding and we are throwing in $5,000 for our son's wedding. He told me the total for his son's wedding will be close to, or over $36,000. CRIPES!!! What a horrible waste of money.

You are getting married. Hopefully it will last for your whole life. The wedding celebration will last half a day. Don't go crazy with everything because it's truly not worth it. Actually the most fun wedding I ever went to (excluding my own) was the most inexpensive one. Have a wedding celebration you enjoy and can have fun at is the most important thing.

Skip the limo -- it's over $600. And I think it's one of the rudest things a bride and groom can do -- go off in a limo for 2 hours between the wedding and the reception. And your guests are supposed to do what? Thank God Chris and Muffin can't afford it. :-)

In my opinion you don't need a million photos either. After about a year they go in the closet to be looked at every once in a while but they are pretty spendy and you really only need a few.

But, of course, this is only MY opinion.

Relax and have fun. And what Cash said is very true: Eat something. It's a long day and you may forget to eat. But you need your strength for all the fun you will have.
 
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I just got married in April- with, like, no money. Asked a friend to use a space his production company used to store crap. Free. Used a jigsaw and scrap wood, three cans of spray paint, cardboard, and floral wire to suspend birds and hearts and clouds from the ceiling. Asked a buddy who is a square dance caller and internet Reverend to do the marrying part. Asked my Old Time Music friends to offer up the music. Did the vows, had a few square dances, shared some shine and passed a guitar around a keg of PBR for a coupla hours. Woohoo! AND square dancing got the families together, touching hands, making eye contact and laughing- great ice breaker for a shotgun wedding that featured everything but the shotgun!
 
My wife and I had been together for many years before we got married. We had talked about what we wanted to do, I have a friend who has a castle (yes, a real castle!) in France, we dreamed really big for years. Then we started to realize that we were never going to be able to afford to do what we really wanted to do. I also thought that it was really unfair to make my lovely wife wait any longer for me to marry her. So we decided to get married in Hawaii, and we did not really invite anyone, but we did not prevent anyone from coming if they wanted to. No pressure. My brother really wanted to come, but could not afford it, so I helped him pay for his ticket and rented a car for him, and another family friend let him stay at his place in Maui. He was the only one from "my" side of the family who came to the wedding. My wife's mother, grandmother, two of her sisters, my brother-in-law, and our nephew came from her side. There were 8 guests at our wedding at Keawala`i Congregational Church. There was a gentleman who played guitar during the ceremony and a photographer. We took everyone out to dinner at a nice restaurant afterwards, and we stayed in a nice hotel room the day before and the day after the wedding. I think we spent maybe $6,000 including the church, music, hotel and airfare, dinner, etc. and most of that we had paid in advance. The only thing my wife said is she wished we had it on video mainly because the guitar player was so much better than we had imagined and he played a song that turned out to be her grandparents' favorite. I made a slideshow with the pictures and music from the guitar player's CD and burned that to DVD. We watch that or show it to friends who were not at the wedding and it does the job that a video would in my opinion and she mostly agrees. One of the best memories about our wedding? The lady who worked at the church said, "Wow, you two are the most relaxed people I have ever seen on their wedding day!" It was really great not to have to stress out about pulling off some huge party. We really enjoyed ourselves.
 
Instead of just numbering the tables at the reception we had a picture of different instruments in the number holders. A trumpet, clarinet, violin etc. If you want to make it about ukes you could have a different uke manufacturer for each table like Kamaka, Kala, Mainland etc. We also gave each person a kazoo and instead of tinkling glasses to get us to kiss you had to stand and play a line from a song with the word "Love" in it. That turned out really well once someone broke the ice...kept the tinkling down to a minimum too. To top that off I wrote a comedy song about my wife and I and played it after dessert.
 
My wife and I were married in the San Francisco City Hall by a Marriage Commissioner in 1994, with just 2 witnesses.

Two days later, we had a self-catered reception at the San Jose Masonic Temple. Balloon sculpture instead of flowers, music on a CD player, pictures as a wedding present by one of the attendees, blown glass cake topper by a gentleman I knew from Science Fiction Conventions, based on a design I made from Sculpy....

I think the whole thing cost $2500 including the hall rental, and we had 60-70 people at the reception.

And a lot of leftover food.

What would I do differently?

I'd have gotten my parents out from the East Coast, instead of saying "Why spend all that money to come out for two days?"

Penny wise, pound foolish I was.

-Kurt
 
We were lucky we didn't have a ton of money but we had friends at church, We were able to be married at our own church, Someone donated a cake, the food was all pot luck, somebody was handy with a camera, in fact a few people just took photos and then gave us copies after.

It really turned out that the wedding wasn't really for us but for our friends and family, getting married was just a formality, to let everybody know that I wanted to be together forever with my best friend.

We did have to escape for a few minuets though because our faces were hurting because we were smiling so much. Getting married is nerve racking, but when it happened I wasn't nervous at all. We kept it simple, I think that is the key that worked for us.
 
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Have fun and know that things will not all go perfectly. Go with the flow as much as possible. Enjoy every minute because it will go by very fast.

My wife had a really great idea. We invited all the kids in the family since family is important to us and we didn't want a really formal reception. She made sure there was a new and interesting toy for each child at the table where they would be sitting. It kept the kids busy and made the event fun for them.

We also had brunch for the reception, it was great food and it wasn't too expensive.

Our favors were chocolates in a net bag with our names printed on the wrappers. They were wildly popular.

Remember in the long run it is all about the marriage, not just about the day.

Our wedding (w/ about 100 guests) and our honeymoon cost about $6000 total and we spent 2 weeks in Arizona for the honeymoon. We didn't want to spend a crazy amount of $.
 
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...what kind of weddings you all had.
We got married in a civil ceremony in city hall, about as romantic as waiting at a dentist's, with only four people allowed to attend. But what more appropriate place for two atheists to wed, eh?

Later, we invited family and friends to join us for a big Japanese dinner. No music except for the tinkling sounds in the background during dinner.

We're still together, 26 years later. She's hardly ever tried to kill me during all that time. Well, aside from the poisonous mushrooms, but that could have been a mistake. Death caps look a lot like safe kinds, I'm told...
 
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I love every one of these response! Thanks for all of the advice! I knew you all would have had some interesting weddings! haha
 
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