It's Worth It? Practical Advice for Childfree Weddings
It's Worth It? Practical Advice for Childfree Weddings
Having a destination wedding when in-laws don't have passports, and more advice for childfree couples
At the end of Part 1 of this conversation, Andrea had just dropped the true reason for all the drama around her destination wedding plans. Read Part 1 here:
Mexico or Bust?
No, the drama wasn’t that she chose a childfree resort (but isn’t it great that those exist?), or that she wanted a very small wedding despite having a huge family. Or even that her dress arrived in Mexico after her.
The drama was that no one on her husband’s side of the family had a passport or was interested in traveling. So how were they going to get to Mexico?
The answer: they didn’t!
Andrea: [My husband’s] mom wasn't interested in traveling.
Paulette: Oh, oh. I don't know what that means. One of the tropes about child free people that we spend all of our money and free time traveling, right? And for me, that's true.
Andrea: A hundred percent. We're going to Egypt in November, I'm super excited. It's bucket list for me to see the pyramids and we're going!
But they didn't want to [travel to Mexico], and there was a lot of back and forth. At one point, we were going to have a local wedding and I was just upset. And everything was all kind of going downhill.
Then my husband asked me, “is this really what we're going to do?” And we changed our minds.
And we made a compromise there too. We had a civil ceremony. And that also made it a little easier because if you get married in Mexico, you have to pay and get things translated and blah, blah, blah.
So we just had the civil ceremony [in California, and] his family came to that. It's actually what my father ended up coming to too, because it was more convenient for his call schedule. Which ended up also making the day of very relaxing because I didn't have to worry so much about my mom and my dad both being in the same place.
And here's the thing, I shouldn't have worried so much because my mom also came to the civil ceremony and my dad was actually charming. He was wonderful. But it had been a decade since they'd seen each other and he had not been charming and wonderful the last time they'd seen each other. So it was like a nice little present to myself.
The Wedding Dress Story
Andrea: The day of my wedding, I woke up. My husband-to-be took his suit and went to my brother's room where my brother let him hang out in the air conditioning. I went and got my hair and nails done and they golf carted me back to my room. And I did my own makeup because I'm not really a makeup artist person. I'm a little minimalistic.
And then my mom helped me get dressed. My other brother, he came and helped as well. ‘Cause it was his friend who had made my dress. So he and my mom got to have the fun of like fighting the zipper because the fabric had like, it was a little more bunched than they expected. She's actually fixing it for me.
But the dress got finished very last minute. There was a whole drama about that too. My friend actually brought the dress to the wedding, because the dress wasn't quite done. And we were going to the airport in four hours. And she's like, “I am eight hours from done on this.”
[So I texted friends:] “Sam and Angela, can you bring my dress to me? You're leaving the day after.”
And they're like, “yes. Yes, we can.”
Paulette: Wow. So you really trusted them!
Andrea: I trusted them to bring me my wedding dress. The dressmaker, she was great. I highly recommend her custom made dresses. She did have a very short time frame to make my dress.
But she brought it to the airport, they picked it up, and they flew it out. They came into the resort with my dress bag in hand with the dress. So I took off to Cozumel with no wedding dress.
Paulette: How relieved were you to see them in that moment?
Andrea: I'm going to be real honest, we had planned it out very well (Editor’s note: of course they had, she’s a project manager!!) because we came in before the wedding and everybody else came, and we were all there for three days. And then we got married and everyone else left and we stayed for the honeymoon.
So I was worried, but also they had texted me and said they had the dress. And if the flight got delayed, they've got X number of other flights they could make it on before there are no more planes. So it was stressful, but it was not terrible.
But we got the dress on, that brother and my mom walked me down and then they went and sat down and then I walked down the sand. And I had a very custom wedding.
Saying I Do
Andrea: My littlest brother actually knows me and my husband probably better than anyone else in my family because he's in our Dungeons and Dragons group. So he had known my husband very nearly as long as I had known my husband because he'd been playing with the group for so long. So he actually did our wedding ceremony since we both knew him.
And he humored me as I incorporated some very pagan Irish hand fasting traditions into a very otherwise Christian ceremony.
Paulette: No D& D elements?
Andrea: It's funny. I had considered having a custom D20 made as our favor, but only eight people came to the destination wedding, which was wonderful because it was so small and like much closer to an elopement, which was what I originally wanted anyway.
But I just didn't have a good contact for it. The prices were weird on it and I was like, “ah, forget it!” But now I have a friend who makes dice. So I'm considering maybe getting one made and sending it out kind of post fact.
We got married on a short time frame, which I know sounds weird, but we'd known each other for years. We didn't date very long, but we were like, “okay, this last element of our relationship adds up, let's get married!”
He said, “my lease is up in this month, we should get married then.” And I said, “okay!”
Success Despite Challenges
Paulette: It sounds like despite all of the headaches and all of the things that could have gone wrong, yours just kept succeeding all along the way.
Andrea: It did not feel like that though. During the planning stage where we were trying and it was going back and forth, I was traveling a bunch for work. So I kept coming back and he kept saying, “so my mom this…”
Paulette: I remember those days.
Andrea: It was a lot. But at the same time, it all did work out once we kind of got all the pieces sorted. Everybody got something. And I'm not saying everyone was really happy with what they got, but everyone got something they could be happy with.
Like my husband got pictures with his family and with his grandparents, and I got pictures with my grandparents. They're sitting in chairs in a rec center, but who cares? They were there.
And my grandfather's mobility was very bad at this point. So getting him to go, even if we'd had it in California—which I tried to explain, it's not really a local wedding if I'm not from California, and none of my family is there—anywhere he had to fly was going to be rough for him.
So being able to go to him for the reception was great. Being able to have the friends when it was just a casual thing, hanging out, playing games, was great. And having the wedding be what I wanted, which was very small, very peaceful, very relaxing. I wasn't stressed on my wedding day. And I don't feel like a lot of women can say that.
I really wasn't stressed. I'm stressed on a lot of normal days. Wedding day? Wasn't stressed. And that was really special.
Paulette: So, let me ask you a question. As someone who also eloped in a civil ceremony and then had the large ceremony due to drama, do you celebrate both anniversaries or just the one from Mexico?
Andrea: No. It is very specifically only the Mexico day.
Paulette: Gotcha. Are they close in time?
Andrea: They are close in time. The thing is, usually, I'd be so down for an extra party, but I was so mad at the end of all of it. But it's better now. It really is.
It got there. It took time. But it all worked out. But no, to me, it's, it's only the Mexico day. That's the date. That's the one that we celebrate.
We got married just in time to be locked in together. So I'm really glad that I was right about who I married. Because let me tell you, you find out fast if [you] get locked up with them. Which I guess everyone knows now, strangely enough.
Paulette: One way or another, they know.
Andrea: I told my husband, I know that I'm difficult to shop for—and he cares about me, he puts forth the effort. He's very thoughtful in his gifts. He got me slippers for our first Christmas because my feet were always cold at his place.
But I told him instead of trying to find an anniversary gift, I would rather that every year we take an anniversary trip. It's not always on our anniversary because we go kind of when it's convenient. But that's our thing: we plan a trip for our anniversary.
Technically other people come sometimes. Like to Egypt: my mom is coming, and the friend who came to the wedding in Cozumel is coming. Spouses are coming, obviously, but we do something that we want to see.
We went to Venice last year!
Advice for Childfree Couples
Paulette: Well, thank you for sharing all of that with me, with the audience. Is there any advice you would give for brides to be dealing with the whole child free wedding experience?
Andrea: It's worth it!
And I don't remember liking weddings as a kid, even as a kid who really liked dressing up. I loved dresses. I threw a tantrum the first time my mom tried to put me in a pair of pants to go play at the park because I wanted to wear my dress to the park. I was that ridiculous. Still didn't like the weddings.
There's great footage of me being very, very bored at one of my aunt and uncle's wedding, because they made the mistake of trying to have the flower girl stand in front, which went exactly as well as you think.
So you see me standing. Then I'm getting bored. Then I'm kind of rolling on the aisle. And then eventually my grandmother coaxes me and I cross in front of the camera to go sit with her. And wow, that's very distracting!
Now, I'll grant you, my aunt and uncle's wedding was very boring because it was Lutheran, so it was Catholic-light as far as the ceremony went. The camera's not zoomed in on me, but I am the thing you pay attention to if you watch the first ten minutes of that video.
So yeah, just do [the kids] a favor: let them do something else. Let them have pizza and movies or, or video games or something that they actually want.
Paulette: Yeah, or just don't bring them. I hated weddings as a kid [too].
***
Andrea added a little tidbit about how her husband managed to meet the kids of one of her non-childfree friends before even meeting the parents. Check out the episode below to catch that short tale.
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