3 different weddings

3 different
wedding themes: budget, nature and bikini

Do you dream of a wedding celebration that people will be talking about for years to come? With a lavish buffet and champagne flowing freely… or perhaps a wedding ceremony at the edge of a forest with a shaman and guests who bestow good energy upon you and your partner instead of gifts… or…

A champagne wedding on a Pommac budget
A few years ago, I was invited to a wedding that was truly grand in the truest sense of the word (…and bear in mind that I’d been living as a luxury wife in the promised land of dollar billionaires in the West and, consequently, had attended a number of truly grand parties!); lots of guests, a fantastic buffet, champagne, champagne, champagne and dancing in a castle… Imagine my surprise when the hostess rather indiscreetly revealed that the per-guest cost was lower than for a normal Christmas dinner!

So how did this bride and groom manage it? Well, first and foremost, it’s all about planning and plenty of forward thinking. Then there’s the matter of having the courage – somewhat un-Swedish – to ask for favours (perhaps in exchange for future favours or instead of a wedding present). And, of course, a great deal of their own hard work.
– The invitations, for example, were beautifully handwritten for all the guests who didn’t have an email address. Those of us who use email received the same lovely invitation by email, with the request: ‘Print it out and keep it!’.
– The fairytale wedding dress was vintage, bought for a song and then ‘spruced up’ by the bride’s designer friend. The groom’s tailcoat was the same.
– The champagne – which was first served mixed with peach juice (from a cheap bulk buy) as a welcome drink and then as a meal accompaniment – was Russian and cost next to nothing.
– The buffet – consisting almost exclusively of vegetarian dishes,(those vegetable and mushroom dishes with wonderful exotic spices, served with plenty of hot and cold sauces, are considerably more budget-friendly than salmon canapés for starters and a meat dish for the main course) was plentiful, beautifully presented and prepared in the groom’s stepmother’s kitchen.
– The dinner and reception were held at a castle an hour’s bus journey away (in a bus borrowed from the bride’s brother’s workplace – which, admittedly, wasn’t the most comfortable, but with classical music playing through the speakers and champagne in our glasses, the journey was still enjoyable) from the church.
– The castle was used for educational purposes and was often empty at weekends, so the tenant was more than willing to haggle over the price.
– A string quartet played at the castle – four young people from a local music college who, for the chance to showcase their skills to the large proportion of guests working in the entertainment industry, were happy to set aside a few hours on a Saturday.
– The ballroom – which was normally used as a conference room – and likewise the dining room, which had been refurbished in the 1960s, had been decorated to what one could imagine was their original splendour by the bride’s sister-in-law, who normally designs shop windows for H&M.
– When it was time to go home, we guests were given an envelope containing thank-you cards from the happy couple. The bride and groom had, quite simply, taken their wedding photos three weeks before the ceremony at the home of a friend who was a talented amateur photographer with access to a photo lab… (and there, once again, they saved on postage costs). It was a much-appreciated gesture!

Nature
wedding A couple of years ago, I had the honour of attending a wedding celebration of a completely different kind. The guests gathered at the bride and groom’s home (who weren’t there themselves) under the guidance of the hosts, and then, dressed in the ‘comfortable clothes’ the invitation had urged us to wear, we trudged a couple of kilometres through the forest and up a mountain. There we were met by the sight of a shaman who asked the guests to form a circle around the bride and groom (who, incidentally, had managed to have a morning wedding ceremony at the Town Hall that same day, as we later learnt) and to name a positive quality about themselves in turn. This was to create positive energy around the bride and groom.
On the way down from the mountain, we were then to collect something from nature that we felt symbolised the bride and/or groom and place it in a large jute sack standing outside the reception venue. This was said to bring harmony and understanding to the marriage.
Seeing the groom’s mother – the noblewoman from Skåne, in her Chanel outfit and rather muddy heels, hand in hand with a punk – declare her foremost positive quality to be ‘flexibility’ is a sight I’ll never forget!

Bikini
weddings…but the wedding I remember most fondly (in more ways than one!..) is probably still the one that took place at the water’s edge at an exclusive American seaside resort, with the bride in full regalia consisting of a knitted white bikini that didn’t exactly do much to conceal her… hmm… let’s call them ‘highly surgically enhanced attributes’, the groom in sunglasses and shorts, and a handful of guests in various swimwear and beachwear.
The party was then held at a nearby hotel where the bride and groom had hired the entire pool area, and we ate a seafood buffet, drank umbrella cocktails and danced to the groom’s latest album.
The bride and groom literally had eyes only for each other and kept slipping away from the party to go to their suite. A gross social faux pas on every level, certainly, but it was love (and they’re still happily married many years on), the sort of love that fills the whole atmosphere and makes every guest feel they’re witnessing something unique and utterly… utterly wonderful……and that’s surely exactly what a wedding reception should be all about, my friends, whatever the external factors at the party may be.

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