We had a Jewish wedding. Our wedding ceremony was very Reform and egalitarian, none of this bride-circling-the-groom nonsense, and an equal exchange of rings instead of just the groom giving the bride a ring. I made sure of that.
Our reception was at a beautiful resort that put together a wonderful cocktail hour and meal, and we had an amazing band.
My father refused to participate in the wedding, and was close to refusing to attend at all, as he disapproved.
It's Jewish tradition that the bride and groom are each walked down the aisle by both parents... he had his mom and dad... I had just mom. I also didn't get a father-daughter dance (not that he knows how to dance anyway...)
My mother-in-law was Momzilla. Among other things... SHE wanted the wedding in HER city. SHE wanted all HER friends to be able to attend without inconvenience, and didn't give a rat's patootie about OUR friends, who were mostly poor starving college students and recent graduates who did not have the financial resources to travel. When she found out we were planning to hold the wedding where we lived, she requested information packets from the reception venues we were considering, and then went to the
Holiday Inn in her city and priced them out. The Holiday Inn offered a chicken-and-steak dinner. So she made up a cost comparison spreadsheet comparing the Holiday Inn chicken-and-steak dinner to each of our top three venues where she added up the cost of a chicken dinner
and a steak dinner for each guest, and tried to convince us to get married in her city because it would be less than half as expensive as our city. Yeah, of course the wedding will be twice as expensive if you serve everybody
two meals!! I didn't talk to her for a while after that....... (Edit: We put our foot down and had our wedding in our city.)
We paid for our own wedding, with a generous gift from his parents. My parents did not contribute a dime (thanks Dad
). They did get us a nice gift, though.
To do over again... I would have a very small family-and-close-friends-only wedding.