What was your wedding like?

ELOPE. Save the money and elope. Next morning you are still married and that much richer.

Ooops, as a florist you were probably not looking for that sort of answer were you?

We got married at sunset at the boathouse in Central Park with 75 friends on the most perfect autumn night. It was a blast...I think.

The wedding video is actually fantastic. My sister interviewed all of the guests and sang show tunes. The judge was at least 90 years old and had a heavy lisp NY accent and spit all over us when he spoke. I think you can actually see us wiping spit off ourselves in the video.

ELOPE!

I say, first marriage and you're under 40: No wedding, just ELOPE.

Second marriage when you're more grown-up: Big Ass Kick Ass party, with those who mean a lot to you.

Both my weddings, in Seattle. The 2nd one (the one I'll keep) was in my backyard and I had a blast. I hear that my guests did, too. I planned for room for things to go wrong, so when some things did it was no big deal--stuff happens.

Two paperback saviors for brides 1) "Wedding Planning for Dummies" and 2) "Offbeat Bride" (by a local maven).

We got married in Vagas with 2 of our friends as witnesses and then went drinking and gambling all night; lots of fun. Then we had a party back in Seattle 2 months later for every one to show up and give us gifts. Make sure you have some kind of party for people to give you gifts. They won't do it for a second wedding and its fun. People want to give you things when you get married but only if they are a part of what's happening. By the way this method saved nothing in terms of money but their were no wedding arguements because we were already married when the party happened. Art T.

We were married in Bellingham, at my parents house overlooking Pleasant Bay. It was fun, we were YOUNG (27), everyone had a fabu time, medium sized (170) and the best part was that we had small buses come and go from the reception to the hotel in town every 20 minutes so no one drove at all. Chuckanut is a scary road! This meant lots of merriment and probably too much champagne for most but people still talk about it 6 years later so it must have been the way to go. By the way, I did not love my flowers- my mom picked them all out after I had talked to the florist about what I wanted, and she listened to her, not me. So, when you talk to a bride, dont listen to her mother so much. All in all it was beautiful but it would have been more so with Green Hydrangeas and Sterling roses and not with whatever my mom picked - which I cant remember but do remember it being what not what I wanted. Oh, and our colors were celedon and white. :)

When I married my "wrong" husband we had a rather "hippified" 3 day bash in a backyard garden in Berkeley. We had a keg of Guinness and an ice-filled claw-foot bath filled with bottles of champagne.

Everyone brought a cheesecake of some sort instead of serving the traditional wedding cake, and we had lots of fresh fruit.

I made my own colorful floral wedding dress and when my soon-to-be-husband refused to wear the seminole-patchwork vest I had secretly made for him as a surprise, I should have run screaming from the room and never looked back. (17 years later I did...) A friend's band played great dance music at the reception following.

I got up at 3am the morning of the wedding and went to the SF flower market, picked out all of my flowers (all fragrant, of course!) and then made my bouquet, headpiece and all the corsages etc before the wedding!

Wedding guests were allowed to select a mini-carn from a large vase of them by the door and pin it on so that everyone was wearing flowers.

It was a 3 day event and many people said it was the best party they'd ever been to. I plan on my next one being even better!

In Joy,

Levitea

I was living in Boston at the time I was getting married and since my mom was in NY she was meeting with "vendors". I specifically told her no yellow flowers....I am not partial to yellow flowers and did not want them at the wedding. Small request from the bride....

I walked into the reception and all I saw was a sea of yellow alstroemeria, chrysanthemums and roses...all yellow

Vegas baby!

It was all about three days of martinis, drunken friends marching through hotel after hotel singing the theme song to gilligans island, and promising not to be cruel to my wife's hound dog with Elvis pronouncing us man and wife.

it's the only way to fly.

I too was a young bride (19 at the time). I really didn't get into the whole "bridezilla" thing.....I was just happy to have flowers of some sort, a good meal, and the best friends and family to share it with. My wedding was a night wedding, on the smallish side (~100).

The only thing I would change is the fact that my Dad didn't show (nothing to do with me, due to other individuals attending the wedding). Oh, and my sister-in-law/maid-of-honor announced that she married her long-time boyfriend the previous weekend at my wedding.

And don't forget the bagpiper for your wedding! (sorry for the shameless self promotion).

Lot's of people are honoring their family origins by including an element of their heritage into their wedding. For those of Scottish, Irish, English or Celtic descent, the bagpipes can be that element.

I played a wedding in January that will be featured on the Food Network's "Dinner Impossible" in April. Aside from me playing the pipes there were also Japanese Taiko drummers.

Whatever you do, have fun with it! Oh, and if you elope, bring me along! I'm easy to travel with and lot's of fun to have along!

Cheers,

Neil

Four years ago this week the county commissioners in Portland's Multnomah County authorized same-sex marriages. Our wedding plans came together in four days. We were married on the stage of a local theater run by a friend/client. The ceremony was performed by my partner's high school prom date and her husband. Their daughter, and the daughter of other friends, were our "ring princesses." Our friend Pat, who owns Di Prima Dolci - an Italian bakery - made our wedding cake. All of our friends - many are incredible cooks - contributed to our beautiful dessert buffet and an amazing collection of wine and bubbly. Many brought fresh cut flowers from their gardens. It was a very memorable event.

Later, Willamette Week even wrote about our marriage: http://wweek.com/editorial/3027/5051/

Unfortunately, but not unexpectedly, the courts later invalidated out marriage. However, just recently the Oregon law authorizing domestic partnerships did go into effect.

Still, we have incredible memories of a wonderful wedding day!

I think mine may top them all. To start with my wife and I got married in our home. The day before are car died, so we borrowed a car from a friend. We had about 50 people there and the judge who was to marry us was 45 minutes late and had "lost" out wedding license. After the wedding we headed to Seaside, Ore and stayed in a beach cottage that our friend owned. We went to the beach and had a beachfire and my wife got an ember in her eye. After several hours in the emergency room, we got back to the cottage. We traveled on down the Oregon coast and headed toward Eugene. (you know where those terrible ducks live). Just outside of Florence, we got pulled over by an Oregon State Trooper. We had just noticed that morning that the plates on the car were expired. We figured we would get a ticket and be on our way. The next thing I know there are two more police cars there and they have their guns trained on us, telling us to get out of the car with our hand in the air. They handcuff us and take us back to the Florence city jail. That was about noon on Sunday. We don't get a phone call until 9 pm that night. In the interim we were told that we were in the possession of a stolen car. When we did get to make a call my wife called our married daughter to tell her to tell our receptionist we wouldn't be in Monday morning. I called my dad. My dad called a friend of his who was a judge in Eugene (in the same county as Florence), who had us released the next morning. My dad picked us up and took us to Eugene, where my friend (who loaned us the car in the first place) met us. (We were living in Portland). The cause of the whole thing is that 3 years previous he had reported the car stolen, it had been recovered, but the State of Oregon (what do you expect from ducks and beavers) had never removed it from their stolen car list.

BY THE WAY WE HAVE NOW BEEN HAPPILY MARRIED FOR 23 YEARS.

Very well said. She enjoyed meeting you as well. Yes she is a gem.

We did the Vegas thing and it was great. A destination wedding definitely keeps the unwanted relatives and "friends" at bay. Plus, there is something to be said for a guests ability to self-entertain. Just be careful not to drink toooo much the night before you get married or you'll end up with Montevegas's Revenge.

And if you rent a car you can't get sent to jail for being in possession of a stolen one.

Richard, that's assuming you drive the one that you rented!

We "cleverly" arranged that our guests entertained each other. There were the musically inclined who performed, one good friend even writing a song especially for the groom.

And then we had Steffon Moody as our Master of Ceremonies. Among other tricks, he collected the "dirt" on the Bride and Groom from our guests and then "revealed all" for the group.

And then there was Neil (the above-appearing bagpiper) who did not play his beautiful bagpipes for us b/c my husband doesn't care for that sound ... but Neil managed nevertheless to pipe for us by playing the straw of his iced latte--crazy.

Oh. And we gently reminded a few folk before the wedding that there would be a time for making toasts, and some of them prepared some "entertaining" bits.

Plus our Chilean friend who recited a sexy romantic Neruda poem, in sexy romantic Spanish.