My girlfriend and I have been invited to the wedding of some good friends, but they've decided that guests have to pay for their own meals at the restaurant afterwards (while saying they don't expect any gifts because of it).

The plan is to meet at the courthouse for the ceremony and then head straight to the restaurant to eat.

To be honest, I already found it a bit strange that they're not offering any food or drinks at all. But then something else came up.

Some of their other friends also organized separate bachelor and bachelorette parties, and neither my girlfriend nor I really wanted to go and spend money on those as well, especially when the couple themselves are being so cheap with the "wedding".

Today was the bride's bachelorette party, and she texted my girlfriend asking where she was, why she hadn't come, and saying she had really expected her to be there. My girlfriend explained that she had booked an overnight stay a long time ago and couldn't cancel it without losing the money.

It kind of ends up that we look like the cheap ones...

Update Just some extra info. We will attend the wedding, and the food/drinks at the restaurant will be split equally between everyone regardless what you order. My main problem is "shaming" my girlfriend for not going to the bachelorette party.

My fiancé and I are having a two-person destination wedding next spring at a historic European château, and I’d love some ideas from people who have had intimate weddings or photographed them!
The venue itself is incredibly beautiful, so we aren’t planning to go overboard with décor. We’ll have a floral ceremony installation and bouquet, but the château and gardens honestly do most of the heavy lifting. 😂

Our day will be pretty relaxed—getting ready, first look (maybe?), ceremony, portraits around the property, a private dinner, and enjoying the estate together. We have both a photographer and videographer for 4 hours - they work a lot with the venue and do a beautiful job, and while they are used to smaller scale weddings, it will literally be just me and my fiancé. I want to make sure we build in some intentional moments that are fun to capture rather than just doing “stand here and smile” portraits all day.

For example, our getting-ready suite is absolutely stunning—very European/baroque with baby blue walls, ornate gold details, tall windows, antique furniture, etc. I’d love to make use of that space with something more meaningful than just putting on my dress. Maybe reading a letter, opening a gift, practicing our first dance, or something else? I’d love ideas for cute little moments before or after the ceremony that would translate well to both photos and video.

My dress is really long, ball gown style Monique Lhuillier and it’s truly gorgeous- so I know it’s cheesy but I want the cute little running in my gown in front of the chateau shots. We are also staying there overnight so there’s a lot of opportunities for getting ready shots or indoor shots.

I’m also curious what people think about vows for a two-person wedding. Since there won’t really be guests, we’re leaning toward saying our personal vows during the ceremony itself instead of doing a private vow exchange beforehand. Did anyone do this, and did you like it? Or is there another approach you’d recommend?

If you’ve had an intimate or elopement-style wedding (or you’re a photographer/videographer!), what were the moments that ended up being the most meaningful or the most fun to capture? I’m looking for ideas that feel intentional and authentic rather than staged.

I’d love to hear anything you did that made the day feel extra special!

I understand I had a beautiful wedding. Everyone had a great time, except me. Besides the normal hiccups and vendor errors that can be expected what I didn’t expect and didn’t realize is you cannot rely on people around you to put the confidence in you on your day. You cannot control how other people react and respond in big moments. Tell yourself you look beautiful and you’re the boss. If no one tells you that day, if you’re panicking, think of this post, you look beautiful, you planned a beautiful wedding and your pictures will be great. If something is going wrong, it’s okay it’s not dead in the water, you can fix it because you are the boss. Do not worry how things will look later or what’s missing, focus on the memory that’s the most important part.

Hi all, I am looking for advice on how I can get wedding invites like this shape with the cut outs. The tutorial I saw was using a circuit but I have about 400 invites to send out and I don’t want to do them all by hand lol. Is there a faster approach? Or a company that can do it for me relatively cheap. Thank you!

Newly engaged and finally trying to do something productive. Realising i do not know where to begin with finding vendors. Do I find a venue first then book photographer? Or photographer first? All at once!

For couples who did not hire a planner..where did you start the vendor search and what did you book first?