When Mrs Ugi & I got hitched..
... we purposefully avoided the church thing, primarily because it was disrespectful to those who do believe in that stuff to have us pretending we do for the sake of a pretty wedding venue.

In fact, we hired a perfectly lovely old stately home (which actually sounds much granter than it was - it's home to "the welding institute") and had everything at the same venue without making people drive around the place. We seemed to be able to organise this less than 6-months in advance and at about 20% of the price some apparently rational people budget. We made the invites, my mum made the cake, my MiL made the dresses. They were all lovely.

We worked on the basis that if you had: Somewhere to sit down, something to eat, a bar and some music, then you pretty much had everything covered. So far as I could tell, everyone had a great time and because we were not stressing about every minute detail, so did we. Oddly enough, it seems that many brides are so stressed about having the perfect day that they have an awful one instead.

Weddings are great as long as they aren't taken too seriously.
( Ugi , it's a game of give and cake, Fri 1 Apr 2011, 9:36, Reply)