Did you have your dream wedding or did you settle?

I never dreamed of a wedding. After my mom's divorces and life with a horrible step father and after watching my sister divorce and the pain and suffering she went through, getting married was never on my agenda. I wanted a career and to be independent.

Marriage to me meant dependency and pain. So I waited a long time (by some standards). I was 26 when I married and it went something like this.

Met him after chatting online for a few weeks. Dated from Sept to Feb the next year. He asked me to marry him on a dare (rather than the whole bended knee romantic thing - though it was feb 14 if that mattered.

I told him not to do it cause feb 14 was too cliche. ) So I accepted tentatively because it did not come with a ring. I got the ring in April after picking it out myself.

I was going to my parents for the easter holiday and wasn't telling anyone I was engaged unless I had a ring (I figured he wasn't serious). The wedding rings we found in May in an Irish import store in Seattle (visiting his family for a week. ) They were matching claddagh rings, but mine had to be ordered and wouldn't be in until June.

I wanted to be married on July 4, which was my grandparents wedding anniversary. So the choices were, get married with no planning and no big wedding or wait a year. I didn't want to wait, nor did I want to plan a wedding.

We got married with some friends as witnesses that did not believe that we would do it (since the day before I was saying - soooo? Are we doing this or what? ) We told his family about two weeks later and told my family about two weeks after that.

I'm sure many people had their doubts due to our short engagement and lack of wedding, but I really don't like pomp. We didn't have the money for a wedding. The whole thing of parents of the bride paying is archaic, and I would never expect my mother to pay for something like that even if she could.

I ceased being dependent on my mother many years prior and wouldn't have started again for wedding. And with 50% of marriages ending in divorce (especially in my family), it was a gamble anyway. One that paid off as 13 years later we are still together.(Statistically though, we had a good chance of making it as we were both older and college educated.

Now I'm not saying this makes us better in any way, just that divorce statistics are divided among age and education). So did I have a dream wedding?Nope. Did I settle?

Not in my mind. Though some may see it that way. I just never had any need or desire for a big, formal wedding.

Lol nope no dream wedding here. Got married in tx long ago with no family around. Belton county court house and the judge had sentenced my husband a few times for public drunkenness.

This is such a great question! I've just read all of the answers here and I hope many more people talk about their choices. We have not had a dream wedding or settled - we have held off.

Really held off. And we're probably going to continue holding off for a few more years too. We refuse to settle and also refuse to spend the money necessary to have the dream wedding.

I can't justify the dream wedding when I can have a Mercedes (or two! ) as well as a down payment on a second home for the same money. Having a total of two luxury homes and four luxury cars just seems to much more rewarding than having a big party.So, here I sit, still unmarried.

If you're reading this, I'd love to hear your comments. This issue might just be the bane of my existence.

I didn't settle at all, and here's why. After all we went through together for six years before we got married, the very best choice for us was to simply have our wedding at the courthouse and throw a small party afterward. It was still quite special-- the room we used at the courthouse was extremely nice, we dressed up in our best, and I had great fun putting together all the food for our family and friends who came to celebrate with us.

Our real focus was on the honeymoon trip we wanted, and we had a lovely cruise for a whole week before coming back to the real world. There's no way we could think of our choices as settling. We just wanted to be together, to be married and to keep loving each other, and that's what counts to us.It was a dream of a fun vacation, and we had a blast!

youtube.com/watch?v=DKEHfIMrv3Y.

I always wanted a dream wedding when I was younger but both times I was married at the court house. Now that I'm older it's not that important. It's more important to have someone, who treats you decent, that you care about by your side.

I have wistfully on occasion thought about maybe having a wedding to renew vows on a anniversary sometime in the future but it does seem like a lot of trouble.

I cant really gove you an answer,but what I can give you is a way to a solution, that is you have to find the anglde that you relate to or peaks your interest. A good paper is one that people get drawn into because it reaches them ln some way.As for me WW11 to me, I think of the holocaust and the effect it had on the survivors, their families and those who stood by and did nothing until it was too late.