Marriage plans

[jack]

After a certain amount of internal musing, the currently prominent plan is to have a wedding (with vows, contracts, awnings, as many of our friends and relatives as we can manage, etc) in spring 2012, but the necessary legal arrangements beforehand on 29th Feb 2012, the anniversary of our officially getting together three years ago (with just us, parents and two-three siblings or witnesses each).

The reasons for this are:

* We really want to be able to count the anniversary from our existing anniversary. I was surprised we felt strongly about it, but we did.
* We don't want a church wedding or a synagogue wedding, and we want to have the wedding in Cambridge town, and there are no venues with civil wedding licences we like there.
* We would rather have the wedding in spring when there's slightly more light, at a weekend, and outside academic term, when some guests will find it slightly easier to make it.

Obviously we can arrange anything we want, but I want to ask if splitting the event like that sounds sane to other people?

The biggest risk is that the actual ceremony will feel like it "won't count", but if it's arranged beforehand, and includes all of the things we find significant, we think it will feel ok.

The other possibilities are (a) hold the wedding on the 29th, even though it's midweek (b) forget the anniversary, and have the wedding in spring, with the registry office arrangements earlier that day, or the day before (c) find a civil wedding licensed venue we like.

The other, related, question, is that we planned to, instead of taking the two of us half way round the globe on a honeymoon, take away a medium sized group of close friends for a week to a cottage (or castle) somewhere in the UK. Does that also sound sane?

We hope to get this sorted _now_, as in, this week if at all possible. At which point we will have a date and a venue and can move on to other planning, and can tell people a provisional date.

Comments

[jack]

*hugs* Thank you.

Although, I mean, I think the chances of Liv and I feeling we have to do something because everyone else does it pretty low. I was thinking more, if anyone saw any upsides or downsides we _might_ care about :)

[naath]

heh

I dunno maybe you don't wanna have a huge party-planning stress and then a big group holiday w/attendant faff, stress, d00m etc. Or maybe you do. I'd think hard about the stress aspects of group holidays though.

[jack]

Hm. Excellent point. We might actually see if any of our friends would be willing to do organising (not the booking, but for the trip itself). That would probably be much, much more useful for us than toasters :)

[naath]

Toasters: rarely a good wedding gift. You probably need to make a list of what would be good so people don't buy you them.

[rmc28]

We learned from our friends Gideon & Jenny. They said "oh, nothing, or if you must, John Lewis vouchers". They got given lots of stuff anyway, and much of it was perhaps not what they'd have most found useful.

So I specified a range of things and made it clear up front that we were NOT touting for gifts, and the overwhelming generosity of our friends and family was at least channelled in ways we most appreciated ;)

[naath]

Yeah, I think there are a lot of people who think you absolutely MUST buy a gift (my cousin and his wife said "nothing or money-for-honeymoon" and my mother insisted on buying STUFF because apparently in-her-opinion both nothing and money are 'rude'*). Best to make a list of things you want, or at least could use.

*as if buying someone a toaster when they told you they don't want one isn't rude

[jack]

I sympathise with her, in that buying nothing or vouches does feel odd to me. But she really needs to be slapped with an etiquette book that says that passive-aggressively disregarding people's wishes, even if they're not perfect, ISN'T MORE POLITE :)

[jack]

:) That's one of many things we want to publish a decision on, but are less critical-path than the ceremony.

I think most of our friends are happy to not assume we need to set up a house together from scratch (especially if we're (a) NOT and (b) already have lots of really nice toasters), but I know people will want to give gifts, and to decide what would be most appropriate (probably some house stuff, some fun stuff, some stuff for people to contribute to if they want).

[lavendersparkle]

We got a really expensive Dualit toaster as a wedding present. Very nice.

[jack]

I can certainly think of toasters I would be exited to get, yet wouldn't go out and buy for myself or for Liv :) But I don't expect everyone to be able to give me one :)

[emperorzombie]

I have planned group holidays for medium-sized groups, and I like planning things, and I'm not sure I would want to try it while also planning a wedding. But I like planning things, so I'm not sure I'd want to pass the planning off to someone else if it were my honeymoon - it's the sort of once-a-lifetime thing where I'd want it all to be done how I would like it.

If you want recommendations for nice cottages and bigger then ping me when you're doing the planning and I will dig out some websites. I would definitely go a couple of days before everyone else, and you could enjoy having a vast empty castle to run around in jby yourselves :)

[jack]

If you want recommendations for nice cottages and bigger then ping me

Thank you! We definitely do: we're looking at this now, as it's likely to be as big a constraint as the venue.

[kaberett]

The Landmark Trust, if you haven't come across them, hire out lots of REALLY AMAZING property.

C particularly recommends Auchinleck House as a place that's been on his to-do list for a long time, but that should not, I feel, be your primary consideration :-)