How was your wedding?
We had a sort of religious ceremony in a hotel ballroom in DC. We had a rabbi officiate, but he was a VERY liberal rabbi (I'm not even jewish). While we used a number of jewish traditions, I didn't really think of it as a jewish wedding. I actually wrote the ceremony myself.
What was involved? Brief details...
My best friend (and sorority sister) was my maid of honor. Another very close friend was my "man of honor." His brother and his best friend were his groomsmen. It was a fairly traditional reception - about 100 people for dinner, drinks and dancing with cake and lots of flowers.
Did you do anything special? How was your wedding special to you? If at all?
Well it was my wedding so of course it was special. One of my favorite things was the fact that after the reception was over, my whole extended family and close friends (basically everyone staying in the hotel) all ended up partying in the hotel bar until about 4am. My wedding had an after-party.
How crazy did your folks drive you?
My folks were fabulous and pretty much let us plan everything the way we wanted, (but they live on the other side of the country so it's a little more difficult for them to be overbearing.) His parents live in the area, unfortunately. His mother was fine. I hated his father by the end of the whole ordeal. His father's only responsibility was planning the rehearsal dinner and he kept insisting that it be held at a steak house, despite the fact that pretty much my whole family are vegetarians.
We finally settled on a nice, inexpensive Italian place that served steak and he spent the entire evening glaring sullenly at the rest of the table. We also had several guest list arguments - short version is that he kept trying to add people at the last minute and didn't care that we were already over budget.
Overall, how much did your wedding cost? Who finally paid for it?
Well. . .it was over budget. Weddings in DC are expensive, but we managed to keep it under the average. We were very fortunate to have my parents pay for most of it. His parents paid for the rehearsal dinner.
Snafus
Well other than the rehearsal dinner from hell. . .the hotel where the wedding was decided to re-tile the lobby floor the week of my wedding. Despite repeated assurances that the tile would be done by the actual wedding day, it wasn't and the lobby vaguely resembled a war zone with yellow caution tape strewn everywhere. There were other issues with the hotel too and I have to say, the only time I went bridezilla during the whole planning process was dealing with that stupid hotel. But we managed to get some of our money back from them. Despite all the problems, we still had a great time though, and that's all that matters!