My wife made her dress, her mother and sisters made all the picnic style food, my crew and I set up the town hall, my best friend ran the grill, the Chief of Police performed the ceremony ( Justice of the Peace )on the lawn, local band rocked well into the night, and 250 people had a great time. Married 23 years, 33 years together, 2 Eagle scout sons, 1 an eletromechanical engineer, 1 studying to be an A/P mechanic, I’m blessed.
We have stuff but the material things are irrelevant, strong family, we pull as a team and don’t get hung up on “doilies”.
I helped out at a wedding reception at our church. The bride was a doctor’s daughter so I expected a pricey menu. It was a memorable reception. The local pizza restaurant catered it, they had the slices in the heated rotating display case and cans of pop in big tubs of ice. That was the extent of the buffet. The centerpieces were bowls of candy and after the meal they had games set up in the back room. Everyone was laughing and having a great time. Paper plates and napkins made the clean up easy for those of us in the kitchen. I was pretty impressed by the whole family’s lack of pretension. I’ve helped at a few weddings and she was the only bride to come to us and say thank you.
I also helped at a wedding for a family of much humbler means. That church had no dishwasher and the bride really wanted real dishes, despite her mother trying to talk her out of it. I washed dishes for about 150 people. I was the only one assigned to that task-thankfully someone stepped in to dry them after I had been doing it all by myself for awhile. Sweet girl, but she wasn’t really thinking about the fact that the entire “staff” preparing everything, serving it and cleaning up were volunteers from church.
I hope that our girls will have that same lack of pretension that your wife had.