<p>
</li>
</ol>
<p>The above is taken from Dictionary.com</p>
<p>109, I knew that oldfort’s D’s could never be on my potential list. :)</p>
<p>LP - YOUR potential list or your son’s potential list?</p>
<p>So, what is your answer, oldfort?</p>
<p>p.s. if no agreement about payment can be made, maybe your D’s will have to elope!
JK</p>
<p>LongPrime…LOL!</p>
<p>(we all could play “matchmaker” for our kids on CC, ha ha)</p>
<p>performersmom’s post 125 is pretty funny too.</p>
<p>Of all the things I didn’t tell my parents about, my “secret” wedding to someone they had known for five years should have been the least of their worries…</p>
<p>Perhaps my mother was more sanguine than most of the posters here because her own wedding was very low-key. Mostly because her father was actively trying to prevent it. The family story is that he was looking for the newlyweds with a shotgun. Whatever the case, he wasn’t at her wedding.</p>
<p>For us, getting married with just the two-of-us present felt very romantic, despite the courthouse setting which was a lot like the DMV. There were several other couples getting married that day, including a man and a woman dressed identically in flannel shirts and workboots, a young woman in a bridal gown (her intended was casually dressed) and two kids who didn’t even seem of age. (He had a skateboard).</p>
<p>When our kids get marry someday, I would prefer to pay for it. It’s simpler that way.</p>
<p>I am one of four daughters. My dad always offered to give us the ladder if we eloped. Since we lived in a one story house…we never quite understood:)</p>
<p>I would be disappointed if my kids eloped but I’d get over it quickly and throw a nice party here.</p>
<p>I can’t say how I’d feel because I can’t imagine the awful circumstances that would have to exist for it to happen that way.</p>
<p>I got married without any of my family present. No one really cared, as we’re not big on ceremony in my family of origin. My H’s parents were there, but it wasn’t his first, and they were beyond caring about ceremony as well. Where I grew up, in the west, weddings were not a big deal, and it was the '70s. People had potlucks for weddings, if they had anything. </p>
<p>When my dad married for the third time, to a woman he’d only known for a few months, and that I’d never met, he wanted me to come home from my summer in Alaska for the wedding. I couldn’t imagine why, as he’d had a secret wedding at a county courthouse for his second marriage, and it WAS the third marriage. Tne whole thing sounded silly. Here we are, 35 years later, and that marriage carried him through the rest of his life, and his wife is one of the dearest people in my life. I regret not being there for the wedding, and meeting her parents before they died. I moved to Asia with both of them shortly after the wedding. </p>
<p>Moving to the Midwest, I have been astounded at the size, as well as logistical complexity of weddings. Of course it is a different time, but still, the presence of extended family really changes things. </p>
<p>I look forward to my S getting married, as he’d probably find someone a bit more traditional than my family, and I do enjoy weddings. The Ds? Can’t imagine them going for anyone especially traditional. I’d applaud keeping it small, or, gasp, eloping, as I’d far rather they save the money for property or a trip.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>In the NY/NJ metro area a typical wedding runs $35K minimum! An horrendous waste!</p>
<p>I’ve always wondered why I could invite 125 people to a very nice restaurant and tell them to order anything they want to both eat and drink for five hours and it would cost way less than a catering hall will charge! </p>
<p>Anybody know why?</p>
<p>Many HI weddings tend to be rather large and formal affairs. Many of us have fairly large extended families & often close friends & relatives will fly in for the celebration as well. Weddings of several hundred people are quite common. Dinners can easily be $100+/person. </p>
<p>Catering halls and hotels charge you for the overhead, having a banquet manager, having a hotel safe, parking garage, lots of staff, dance floor, stage, screen, projector, microphones, and all sorts of things, plus throwing in a hotel suite for the people hosting the party & sometimes special rates for hotel guests. Catering halls will charge what the traffic will bear, as do restaurants. They all have to stay in business one way or another. </p>
<p>In my next life, I’d like to have a simple ceremony at a home, park or beach. 
Nah, no regrets, though I do love the simplicity of some of these celebrations.</p>
<p>we eloped. not anyone’s business but the two of us.</p>
<p>As for DS, its my list. We’re not gonna spend a lot for any wedding. But I had a brainstorm just before Xmas and we set aside a small amount of $ for DS’s future children. Should be a tidy some in 20+ years. And invisible to fafsa/profile. :)</p>
<p>" H said there would be a cash bonus if our girls eloped. I would kill them. "</p>
<p>I like your husband’s idea ! </p>
<p>I have an aversion to the big, over the top expensive weddings that seem more like competitions than anything</p>
<p>My husband and I ( 2nd marriage for both ) got married by the mayor of our town and we are very happy…first weddings were more eleaborate , yet nothing compared to what seems to be the norm these days</p>
<p>I would rather give our daughters cash for something that will last more than a few hours
We would be more than happy to throw a party after the fact
As long as they spouse is the right match , I could live with an elopement</p>
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</p>
<p>What if the circumstances that prompted the elopement had to do with your child’s intended spouse, rather than your child? For example:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>“In the circles my family moves in, the parents of the bride pay for the wedding. But my parents are in financial trouble right now, and they don’t want people to know it. If we elope, no one will know that they couldn’t afford to pay for a wedding.”</p></li>
<li><p>“My bar mitzvah [or bat mitzvah] was the most horrible experience of my life. I hated having to stand up in front of that crowd and be so conspicuous. A wedding is the same thing but with two people doing it. I dread the thought of having to do that again.”</p></li>
<li><p>“If we have a real wedding, my parents are going to insist that we invite my aunt and uncle. But my uncle harassed me sexually for years when I was growing up. I don’t want to get married in front of him.”</p></li>
<li><p>“My divorced parents refuse to be in the same room, and I don’t want to have to choose between them because there will be long-term problems with my family if I do.”</p></li>
<li><p>“If we have a wedding, I’m going to have to pay for it [or for my half] myself because my parents can’t [or won’t] contribute. Even a simple wedding would wipe out my very limited savings. I would rather that we put the money toward saving for the new furniture we both want.”</p></li>
<li><p>“My family objects to our marriage because we are of different religions. If we have a wedding, the only relatives who will be there will be from your family.”</p></li>
</ol>
<p>There are other scenarios, but I thought I would just pick a few. Can you see your child agreeing to going to City Hall and telling everyone afterward if his or her intended spouse had one of these issues?</p>
<p>Roshke…why do you assume “awful circumstances”? We have good friends who came home married. They have and always have had a terrific relationship with their families. There was no crisis. The families threw a lovely party for the newly married couple. No awful circumstances.</p>
<p>Re: 4. “My divorced parents refuse to be in the same room, and I don’t want to have to choose between them because there will be long-term problems with my family if I do.”</p>
<p>I couldn’t figure out how to keep Happydad’s mom/sister/grandma safely separated from dad/secondwife/theirkids/othergrandma for the two or three days necessary for a prewedding/wedding/postwedding in my hometown half a continent away from the dad/secondwife/theirkids/othergrandma group and in an entirely different country than the mom/sister/grandma group. Happydad told me to stop hyperventilating, and hop a plane back to the city where we’d met and where he was still in grad school, so we could get married there. I did that, we were married by a judge with two friends as witnesses, had bang-up parties with the various relatives in separate locations afterwards, and have been forgiven by the relatives who were ticked off about the no-big-wedding thing.</p>
<p>Twenty-five years on, my otherwise angelic MIL still refuses to ever be in the presence of Step-mom who she has never had any kind of conversation with, and has only seen once, at a distance, at a family funeral. Because of this refusal to have any kind of communication, there are many family issues not the least of which is that Happykid’s relationship with her only living grandfather is severely limited because of the emotional blackmail against developing a relationship with the step-grandmother, half-uncle, and half-aunt. I can’t help wondering if I had been braver, and had created the situation in which they would be forced to interact over the course of three or four days way back then, things might be different now.</p>
<p>Thumper, I’m referring to our own family, not anyone else’s. In our family there is no way one of my kids would elope secretly and think it would be fine with us. </p>
<p>Marian - Obviously all kind of unfortunate situations can and do exist in other families If they did, I’d still expect my own kid to tell us about any plans to get married and even in the face of your scenarios would want to be present, personally. If money was an obstacle we’d help out ( and I expect to, regardless). Note that many of your examples do not preclude a smaller, more intimate ceremony and none requires going off in secret to be married, something I can’t imagine my specific kids doing in any case.</p>
<p>Roshke, what would prevent your children from getting married and not announcing it until afterward? How do they differ from the many people who would consider doing it that way?</p>