Wedding Rings <3

[Ophiucha]

My fiance and I picked out our wedding rings yesterday; we are getting them fitted, so we're wearing them on our pinkies here, but this is them. What do you guys think?

BTW, wedding planning is a hellish process, and I advice none of you get married to save yourselves the trouble. Stuck on catering right now, and it's just such a pain to get anything accomplished with these people. $2,200 for 45 people's worth of food? Yeah, no.

 

[Telcontar]

Those are really cool rings!

Heh, didn't expect an anti-wedding rant in this one, but hey - at least your rings will always look good.

 

[Black Dragon]

Very cool rings. I love the design.

I know how challenging wedding planning can get. Thankfully my wife and her mother took the lead, although I still did my part. We ended up having a renaissance themed wedding, where the guests (and ourselves) came in costume for the reception. It was a fun time.

How soon is the big day?

 

[Ophiucha]

Heh, didn't expect an anti-wedding rant in this one, but hey - at least your rings will always look good.

Haha, it's been keeping me from my writing. Weddings are very nice, just a pain in the ass to plan. I shall rescind my previous statement and instead say "make your significant other do it".

 

[Ophiucha]

Very cool rings. I love the design.

I know how challenging wedding planning can get. Thankfully my wife and her mother took the lead, although I still did my part. We ended up having a renaissance themed wedding, where the guests (and ourselves) came in costume for the reception. It was a fun time.

How soon is the big day?

Cool. We thought about a themed wedding, but most of his family is a bit too conservative to go with anything too nerdy. Honestly, they don't even like the fact that it is casual. And it's August 15th.

 

[Kate]

Nice!

I'm getting married in July, I sooooo hear you! Wedding planning sucks! And we're keeping it casual too (much to the confusion of a lot of rellies, by future mother-in-law nearly choked when I said I wasn't having a bouquet. She'll get over it.)

I have no idea how people who do big full on weddings cope. Mention the "W" word and everything gets about 20% more expensive

Funnily enough, I wanted to elope to New Zealand while it was my dear fiance who wanted to have a wedding. But who's planning it? (grumble, grumble, grumble)

 

[Ophiucha]

Funnily enough, I wanted to elope to New Zealand while it was my dear fiance who wanted to have a wedding. But who's planning it? (grumble, grumble, grumble)

Exactly the same with me. I was 100% on board with a court house wedding, since the only people who could come to my wedding were my parents and brother, and a friend or two if I paid for them (I ended up paying for one of them), but he has a lot of friends and family around here, so I agreed to the wedding. And I'm the one sitting here looking for caterers. *sighs* Ah well. My dad paid for the whole thing, so I guess I can't complain, but still, he's dreadful about giving any input.

 

[Fnord]

I think those are a nice and tasteful departure from the "stock band of metal" of wedding bands, especially men's rings. I always wondered why men's rings were either really plain, or really gaudy.

I didn't mess with having a wedding; we just decided to have a reception and invite people. Way less planning and we got to spend money all the money on what mattered most to us: the party!

 

[Digital_Fey]

Beautiful rings, and so elegant! Best of luck with the wedding plans, it sounds hectic. I hope the day itself is perfect from beginning to end

 

[Ravana]

Very nice. Imaginative without being overstated.

-

Advice on weddings (if not for you, then at least for anyone who still has the opportunity to take advantage of it): keep it simple. Spending more won't get you a better wedding, just bigger bills. (If people really want to spend money on you, tell them to give it to you directly.) Our "catering" was a few party trays from a local grocery; the cake was professional but modest; the decorating was taken in hand by a couple friends; the music I selected and sequenced myself from our CD collection, which was then burned to discs by a friend (at the time I lacked that capability); the photographer was a friend of a friend… we even got the church cheap since the minister was the father of a friend (I realize this isn't an option for everyone). We told our attendants what we were going to be wearing, and told them to "wear something that coordinated": the groomsmen got together and wore the same thing the groom did (solid black, collarless shirt–and beards and ponytails, but they already had those), the bridesmaids each chose a completely different dress from their closets that went with the bride's color (turquoise).

The minister gave us his "Chinese wedding menu" (choose one from column A, one from column B…)–and then commended (I think) us when we completely ignored the list of suggested scriptures and chose a couple selections that he'd never seen used in a wedding before. (It was largely coincidence that they happened to be from the OT: I tried hard to find ones I liked from the Rig Veda, the Koran, the Upanishads, etc., but didn't locate any that worked better.) We asked him if it was okay, given the broad range of faiths represented among our invites, if we left Christ out of the service; he said as long as God showed up somewhere, he was comfortable with it. (As you can probably guess, he's an incredibly cool guy.)

And it was the first, and to my experience so far the only wedding where everyone enjoyed themselves. Yes, people will come up and tell you it was "the best wedding they'd ever seen"… but I mean everybody genuinely, and obviously, had fun, throughout the entire thing. It was comfortable, it was laid back, it was as close to "no-stress" as we could make it. Which, I firmly believe, was why everyone had fun.

[Two other things we did, which won't necessarily work for everyone, but which I'm sure also contributed to the atmosphere: a no-presents rule (which was violated only in minor and easily overlooked ways–and didn't hurt us, as we were both in our thirties and already had everything that would normally appear on a registry: again, you can use a "cash gifts only" rule, and get stuff you actually want, while making life simpler for your guests); and a no-children rule (which was violated only by the two people who had infants… and even they were well-behaved, cheerful or quiet by turns, which borders on a miracle).]

So that's my advice, for what it's worth. Your results may vary.

 

[Ophiucha]

Yes, we're trying to keep costs as low as possible, even though money isn't exactly low - at least for living in a city, as we do. Those rings were $700 together (we got them as a Mother's Day sale ), we rented a hall for the full day at about $650. We're doing nearly all of the food ourselves, save the hot foods (it is an evening wedding, and his family would whine if we didn't), and both of our outfits were less than a grand, combined. Other than alcohol, basically everything is coming pretty cheap, except...

We're having difficulty finding good options for rented cutlery, crockery, and linens. We've got 50 people, and no matter where I look, the costs are running over $1,000. :/ It seems really dumb to pay more for forks than anything else.

 

[Ravana]

Have you considered plastic?

Ours was a late morning wedding, so we could get away with lunch foods: sandwiches and salads, plus a couple crock pots. Not sure what to tell you there. That does seem a bit excessive.…

 

[DianthasProphecy]

I feel you on the planning mess. I'll be married two years September 19th, and the original plan nearly drove me nuts. We finally decided on a small church wedding at the church my parents and all my aunts and uncles were married in. My Aunt got the food, and made our cake (which was gorgeous). I honestly enjoyed just having the closer friends and family. (Which in my tight knit family was all of them, hence why my Aunt Tracy did so much.) Honestly, my best advice, is to go small. It's less stressful!

 

[Chilari]

Those rings are so elegant. And congrats on the upcoming wedding.

I'm engaged but the wedding won't be for at least two years; we've already been engaged 4 years. We want to finish our studies first. But with the wedding itself, which we've started thinking about if not actually planning properly, we're going to keep it simple. I'm lucky enough that my parents have a nice big garden, so we're thinking of just having the wedding there, with a marquee. We're both atheists so no church hire or priests involved. The basic plan is to have a short ceremony, just the vows and the signing of the register, then go straight into the party with a buffet lunch for all guests and an afternoon of music, dancing, bouncy castles and fun, followed by an evening sit down meal for immediate family, bridesmaids and groomsmen.

 

[Kelise]

Ooh, I like the rings Especially that they totally match, very nice.

My partner and I were discussing weddings, and have come to the agreement that we want nothing. Just the legal part, spend $1,000 (or pounds, since he's British) on some reaaally nice outfits (as we're both obsessed with coats) and then... yeah. Have nice photos, and that's all. My family wouldn't really come along, and neither would his - parents would be sated with a nice dinner get together, we hope, and leave it at that.

Honestly, with how expensive everything is these days... I'd rather save the money for a nice holiday or putting it towards where we'll live. Neither of us deal with attention that well, so a whole day of 'everyone' looking at us? No thanks.

Yes, we're both kinda weird.