We will do a destination wedding, which is the next best thing to eloping. It's just we are both the oldest in the families and a lot goes with that, apparently despite there already being grandkids and younger cousin's weddings previous to this. I was unprepared for how little of the engagement halo grace period we would enjoy.
Ohhh. Definitely the next best thing. Awesome. No no. You must start planning all the wedding things RIGHT NOW. Because wedding.
My wife and I were engaged for 3 months. I don't understand being engaged longer... marriage is the fun part...
Just so you know, here is how every person you send an invite to your "destination wedding" will react: "OOOOOOooooooh, look at downndirty and dirtyress, aren't they so fancy, expecting us to fly out to their fancy wedding in Bora Bora. Fuck those two. Send them a used crock-pot"
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.5starhelicoptertours.com/sw1-las-vegas-night-strip-helicopter-wedding.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.5starhelicoptertours.com/sw1 ... dding.html</a> That's what my wife and i did. Cheap, easy, small, quick, but still memorable and beautiful.
I don't mind the idea of being married to the GF, but legally it makes no difference for us. In the mean time, there's a house to buy, trips to take, hobbies to prop up etc. I used to very much take the 'if you don't have a funeral, you're still dead' line when it comes to weddings, but I've softened that a little bit. It's something I'm sure we'll do eventually, but it's just down the priorities list.
Never understood the whole 20 to 30 thousand dollar or more wedding thing. It makes no sense. We had a small ceremony that we created ourselves. We found a quaint old white Methodist church that we liked because for 500 bucks the reverend didn't care I was catholic and she was Lutheran. As a bonus he looked just like Walt Whitman which I thought was super cool. We wrote our own ceremony and he threw in all the religious stuff. We rented a local VFW on the cheap, got a friend who was a DJ to host, and another friend who was a budding photographer to take pictures for the cost of a new effects lens for her camera. The catering was the biggest expense but we found a really good caterer cheap and we made all the decorations ourselves or got them at a discount on e-bay. For around 4,500 we had a nice little wedding that almost paid for itself by the end of the night with the proceeds from the cash wedding gifts. It was a blast and we didn't have to start our marriage off in a mountain of debt.
Yup. Our wedding was 20 people with a non-denominational minister and flowers that I bought online (which turned out to be gorgeous). Nice dinner afterwards, an ipod and a Jambox for ambient music, open bar for the few lushy friends we had - all in, including my dress, his suit (which he bought), all the jewelry and the wedding itself was under $6K and paid in cash. By contrast, my brother is planning his wedding next year and the current tally is upwards of $48K. It makes me want to hurl.
If I have my way it's going to be a courthouse wedding and maybe a party after for others to celebrate with us. As I get older that is going to be more and more likely. My dad recently got married. He's been dating the same woman for 10 years or so, they've lived together for 5 of them. Super cool lady, everyone in the family loves her. Even though he couldn't see spending the rest of his life with anyone but her, he was still hesitant about getting married because of how his previous marriage and divorce went. Earlier this year I get a call on a Thursday from my dad. He calls to tell me him and his GF are going to Vegas that weekend to get married. He said he had thought about not even telling me but changing his facebook status instead. I let him know he should have just changed his facebook status.
I know I have posted about my non-traditional wedding several times, but you all get to hear about it again. The bar across the street from my house allowed us to use the beach volleyball court for our wedding for free as long as we promised to send everyone back later for drinks. We got married around noon. I wore shorts, she had a nice gown. Our officiant was my best friend (he got ordained on the internet). The three of us wrote the entire ceremony with lots of fun jokes. We had a whiskey ceremony instead of some lame candle and sand mabob. Everyone was drinking the entire time, as the bar opened early just for us. I rented out my condos club house for the reception. My brother and I brewed all of the beer. I bought around $300 worth of liquor. We paid a caterer to make tacos. My mom and the caterer decorated the room to make it look snazzy. Everyone got day time drunk. We had a cornhole tournament. Toward the end of the afternoon God summoned a monsoon. When the sun came back out everyone used the wet grass and puddles that had formed as a slip and slide. Total cost of about $3000 her gown and the catering was most of that. About 70 of us got really drunk and had a party. Side Note- My parents paid for the wedding and offered up as much money as we needed. We still went the cheap route because it was more us. Side note 2- Two things not about marriage that became awesome as a result of marriage. Our taxes went down considerably. My health insurance also became about $200 per month cheaper because she was no longer my domestic partner.
Spreadsheets, keep spreadsheets: Man sends wife spreadsheet of how many times she's turned down sex and why each time. Sorry if this is a dupe but I had to share. Im more surprised a 26 year old is using a spreadsheet.
What he IS doing right now is fucking somebody else. Sorry to be a realist but that sort of bitterness- justified or not-- is a Red Flag on fire for a vengeance lay. Men are that way. Withholding sex makes a hungry dog turn over the trash. Hell, give us long enough without it and we start fucking each other, like prison or summer camp.
Really? Maybe I just hang out with too many consultants but I get spreadsheets for everything. Vacation planning options, cost breakdowns for bachelor parties, expense splittings when I had roommates. I know for a fact one friend got off on them, because he would add colored formatting and unnecessary summations so the whole thing would be pretty and auto-adjust. He's one who would do something like this, I wouldn't be surprised if he had a similar one for sex partners before he got married.
My favorite comment from reddit was the person who wanted to add "getting the spreadsheet" as a breakup phrase: <Record scratch> Hold up. Nope. Uh, what is the length of time you would have to go without having sex with a woman before you'd have sex with a dude? Because, that length of time for me is forever. I think I went to different types of Summer camps than you did. Wait, is that what 'cottage' means?
I dunno. It's kind of out there, but maybe he could, after analyzing the data, work to figure out why the relationship is tanking...if he wants to save it. Women don't refuse sex for no reason, guys. If she's turning out down in the bedroom over and over and over and over again - it's probably time to take a look at your relationship outside the bedroom and start figuring out where you're (collectively) going wrong.
I met the girl I lost my virginity to and the future Mrs. Noland at summer camp, so not the ones I went to.
Sex Camp Yeah, that's what I'm saying. The Summer camps I went to, the guys cabins were separate from the girls, and we spent most of the week trying to devise ways to sneak over there at night, or planning hookups to "watch the submarine races" at the lake. We weren't always successful; but, if not, I never went, "hey buddy, let's just get our gay on."
Okay look: the summer camp thing was a joke, most of us probably weren't in the Scouts. The prison one was not.