Essentials Wedding

Big dreams, small budget? An essentials wedding may be perfect for you. Strip away the fluff and concentrate on the core image of what you want your wedding to be. If your wedding is to be an intimate gathering, your approach goes for everything – invitations to flowers to the wedding reception and even to the honeymoon. Here's one way it can work:

As the sounds of The Wedding March fill your home church and your ears, close family & friends watch you be escorted down the aisle to stand next to your handsome groom. They listen as you exchange vows in front of your minister. Perhaps you're wearing a beloved family member's dress lent with love or maybe it's your favorite blouse that he says makes your eyes sparkle. Whatever your choice, it suits you and your groom and will make your wedding the perfect day.

Following the ceremony, a family friend takes sharp pictures of the wedding party with a digital camera. You retire to the church hall, where you smell a delicious wedding feast prepared by your family and see the delightful decorations they put up. With a toast and dancing to a selection of wedding favorites on CDs played by a friend of the family, you have a wedding reception to remember!

Immediately following the wedding reception, you depart for your honeymoon – a week of bliss that was carefully booked from discount travel websites.

Other Essentials Weddings

Other Essentials Weddings can be held outside – in the backyard with a barbecue for the wedding reception, in a garden or at a municipal park. A most Essentials Wedding consists of showing up at a Magistrate's office with Marriage License in hand. A sample home wedding follows.

Home Weddings

Stepping to Here Comes The Bride, you enter the wedding ceremony from the dining room to see him standing there looking wonderful in his suit. You wear a dress lovingly sewn and accessorized at home. As your closest family members and friends watch, a minister, who also is a friend of the family, reads vows the two of you crafted. There isn't a dry eye in the house as you enjoy your first kiss as a married couple.

The wedding reception, held in a dining room decorated that morning with a mix of home-made and store-bought items, offers delicious potluck food. The cake was baked by close cousins, and everyone got together in your kitchen that morning to ice it. A few days ago, mom baked cookies. Last weekend, your sisters prepared favors. Your brother brought the beer. Music comes from an iPod plugged into the home entertainment system.

You managed what is essentially a short guest list by determining how many people you can hold in your home and asking yourself who you can't imagine missing your wedding. Invitations were printed on your home computer, using free online templates – just like your thank you notes. To save on postage, you asked your guests to RSVP by email.

An Elopement Wedding

Eloping provides the single most intimate wedding possible – as few as the two of you, an officiant, and a witness if required. It gives you the opportunity to arrange your wedding however and wherever you want. And it controls your cost.

While in the past, an elopement was something a couple up and did, today more couples plan their elopements. There are no rules to an elopement anymore – some people even take spontaneous family members or friends with them! If this is what you plan, step outside of the norm as you prepare for your lifetime together.