to think that my friends are remarkably unimaginative in their wedding plans?

[LoveInAColdClimate]

MN seems to be full of people's themed weddings - either people complaining about having to dress up for them or people posting about their own (i.e. the black & white wedding or various weddings discussed on the recent wedding guests' pet hates threads).

I have never been invited to a themed wedding. I don't think I know anyone in real life who has been invited to a themed wedding. All the weddings we go to (ours included) follow exactly the same pattern of church (generally in the middle of nowhere) followed almost without deviation by a marquee in someone's garden, with the bride and groom wearing, respectively, a long ivory dress and a morning suit. I have never been told what to wear (apart from one where I was warned that we would be standing outside for ages and told to wear a hat and suncream as I am lily-white and turn lobster in about five minutes - I don't think this was a general warning!) or asked to bring a candle, flowers, or anything else. Virtually all the female guests under about 40 will be in something from Coast, the rest will be in a more grown up version with a jacket. All the men in morning suits or just ordinary suits.

I absolutely love weddings and am more than happy with the above format, but am I being unreasonable to think my friends and I are being most boringly identikit when compared with some of the weddings posted about on here? Where are the crazy themes for me to moan about?

Well I wouldn't change my wedding day for the world - pretty much as Orm said only (good) booze and food followed by making heartfelt promises followed by more booze and food. I got the quote for the flowers and said right forget that - we'll have extra cocktails instead! So just extra booze and food, no nerves of having to appearing at the church door in a "look at my dress" kind of way (cos I didn't really have "a dress" as such and we had "reception" first so were nice and relaxed with our guests in advance of the ceremony) and no walking down a stupid aisle like some wannabe princess. Oh and we baked our own wedding cake - ish Our "venue" loved how we did it and really got into the spirit of it. The brief was simply "as unwedding like as possible".

Next time I get married, I'm having a tarts and vicars theme. Vicar bit's already taken care of though so guests won't have to tax their decision making capabilities too much.

We had a hogroast, ceilidh, in a converted sheep barn. Invitations said 'wear what you want'. SIL wore her jeans. She was a bridesmaid.

And at controversial. Can see the best man dressed as hitler.

What if the best man was dressed as a crying nazi clown?

(re the drawing in the guest book on another thread, I don't have that sort of thing in my head okay?)

There's controversial and then there's terrifying.

And I've changed my mind about my theme. I want medieval wenches and large hams next time. Dress code, heaving bosoms and loose morals.

Ours last year was done mega cheap. My dress was a grey beaded one off Ebay, my hair was scarlet, my flowers a £1 bunch of sweet williams I arranged myself. Shoes were a £5 pair of silver gladiator sandals. DH was in a £50 jacket I found on ebay- fake chinchilla- style fur in pink, silver, grey and white stripes. He also had stripes bleached in his dark hair.
In and out registry office in minutes, then off to the pub for tons of food, a bouncy castle (the pub already had it up) the best live band in the known universe and a cracking party. Even our dog came along and thoroughly enjoyed himself people still say what a great time they had. The whole thing cost about £600-700.

It's funny, everyone wants to do the mind-numbingly dull traditional thing the first time round (I did it! zzzz Though I didn't wear one of those tacky white/ivory/cream/whatever you want to call it strapless ball gowns - bloody horrible!)

However, ask most women what they'd do if they did it a second time and it's all mad themes and eloping to Vegas

This says alot about the reality of the traditional snooze-fest wedding.

I'm now divorced and in the unlikely event that I fall for that trick again, I will indeed do it in Vegas, in a Rhinestone Bikini with Elvis doing the honours. Sod everyone else!

I got married in a church on the Saturday [didn't wear a dress , wore trousers] Only family were invited. The next day we had dd christened and threw a huge party in our garden. It was fantastic and didn't cost the earth. We had our honeymoon before and went to France and got loads of champers.

Dh and I had been together 15 years by the time we married and we wanted the focus to be on dd.

I never understand how people spend so much. If I was going to spend tens of thousands, i'd rather travel on it.

I'm with amapolean, absolutely abhor weddings, just about tolerated my own (and I had 2, one for each family including a beach wedding in the west indies) could have happily eloped with dh and done it in secret!

I find them soooooo utterly boring, doesn't help that mil loves them and everytime we go around it's let's watch x's wedding video. I'm like seriously, and suddenly feel very tired, need lie down, got a headache coming on!

I really enjoyed our wedding. It wasn't a church wedding - we had it at a Tudor house and had live, non-amplified, Tudor musicians right through and I wore a Tudor style blue dress (see my profile pics.) But it was traditional in the sense it had a walk down an aisle, lots of family and friends and their children there (in their normal going-to-a-wedding clothes), meal with speeches, a tiered cake (but the biggest tier was chocolate and it had elephants on top, again see my profile pics) and dancing (Tudor, taught by the musicians) in the evening. It was the wedding for me and my husband.

The lovliest wedding (other than my own) that I've ever been to was in Snowdonia on the shores of a little lake. Everyone camped, and brought and played instruments. We sat round a big camp fire singing til the sun came up. There was quite a lot of beer involved and a BBQ but no cake, bridesmaids, best man's speech etc.
I think the actual deed must have been done at the registry office and this was a sort of blessing.

Mine was in a packed church (our local) with a band and a gospel choir then back to our house for a BBQ (all from our local farm) in the back garden.
Our neighbour had strung fairy lights up in the hedge and trees and we had a huge tiered fruit pavlova as a cake. I loved every minute of it!

I knew someone who was mad about cricket and so was parther so they had a cricket themed wedding - reception was in a cricket pavillion, the wedding breakfast was a cricket tea and a great big game of cricket ran through the afternoon... brides side vs grooms side , all washed down with copious amounts of pimms.

Lots of prizes too - nothing obvious like the 'winning' team, but things like most spectacular catch, most spectacular miss, person who got exactly xx runs, most outrageous cricket blazer, fastest runner in high heels, most sandwiches consumed [could do with a sandwich smiley], most biscuits consumed [now need a half eaten biscuit smiley], and so forth.

all very personal and appropriate to the happy couple, gently themed but in what was a very fun way.

Thank you for that lovely advertisment clevermummy

My (rather elderly) parents went to be a football themed wedding where the bride and groom wore football strips and jeans to the church, the invites were like programmes etc. They said it was the funnest wedding they had ever been to and everyone was into the spirit of it even the vicar.

But guests weren't required to wear a football strip, they might have thought differently of the wedding if that had been the case

ours was pretty traditional.

But that's because we like those wedding traditions and that's our only opportunity to do them. A long ivory dress happened to suit me really well - and when else am I going to get to wear one?

We can do other "themes" (cocktail party, picnic in the park, etc) for other parties in the future.

oh it was on old thread bumped by someone wanting free advertising silly me

The cricket wedding sounds lovely, what would they have done if rain had stopped play?

(notso)Veryclevermummy, you have to pay to advertise on MN. If you click on 'Report' to the right of your name then MNtowers will remove your post for you and give you details of how to advertise.

Bit off topic, but I'm just gutted at the fact that, having been at @ 20 weddings in the last 10 years, there wasn't a single fight at any of them - and at least half of those were in Ireland!

Is there a wedding section on here?

heres my wedding plan... me,dd and dn in purple dresses,dp, ds and ds(aka tummy baby) in matching pinstripe suits (only cos ive seen them and they are soo cute), registry office, to some hall that i havent been able to find yet for pie and peas... disco, alcohol (not for me, i'll be breastfeeding 2 by then) buffet and fruit cake.....

what i actually want is me,dp and the littlies at the registry office on a friday afternoon (dp's half day) then off to wacky wharehouse for a meal...

My best mate is getting married in july and her hen night theme is pale pink (with black if you have it) - i dont own ANYTHING pale pink.

her wedding is pale pink and black themed but i dont know if guests are expected to wear them colours as she sent me a pic the other of a dress she think would look perfect on me, it was black with white and lovely too.

I had a very traditional wedding - full nuptial mass celebrated by teh priest who married my Mum and Dad and was a family friend, meringue dress (all the rage in the 80s, would not be seen dead in one now!!), bridesmaids, ushers, reception at local hotel with evening disco.

Dress aside, I would not have changed a thing. I personally tbink far too much emphasis and effort, not to mention money is spent on "the big day" and not enough on what getting married actually means.