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Message: [QUOTE="Hans Sprungfeld, post: 2069531, member: 181"] There is SO much I like about the Boneyard in this thread, and I hope OP and others find it equally edutaining. Here's a bit of my (mostly) DIY wedding: We were not religiously observant beyond needing a rabbi and knowing none would be available on the Sabbath, so we got married on a Friday afternoon, with only immediate family, single attendants and a nearby couple with whom we were friendly acquaintances because we needed a second non-related Jewish witness and one canceled out on short notice. The ceremony was at a deconsecrated church that was filled with surrealist art created by my mother-in-law's friend who offered his place because it fulfilled a dream he'd once had. My parents paid for a rehearsal dinner-sized meal at a local restaurant, and then we younguns went home and got to work. A tent and dance floor had earlier been erected in our FRONT yard, which was the only large enough non-treed space available; this compromise idea required some selling on my part because we lived the main drag. Still, the house sat behind a sizeable hedge along the county road that led into the single traffic light village where we lived. After dinner, we had a small army of friends arrive to set up and decorate tables until wee hours in the morning. Earlier, we had prepared and stored food at the local B&B where my wife was manager and coordinated catering. The food was transported to our home in kitchen wastebasket-sized bags ("flexible plastic containers"), and the Inn provided staff fpr the next day. Another of my mother-in-law's friends gifted us with her bayman husband's clams and his services shucking them. That alone made for a very memorable time for a number of friends who had never had it so plentiful and so fresh. We got an appropriate amount of beer, and some wine; again, I successfully sold my wife on the notion that it'd be OK not to have an open bar ("for the grown-ups"), because her mother was in AA, and I knew that my parents and their friends were of a generation of Jews who did not drink except mildly at occasions like this. We even rented a school bus from friends whose family owned the business in order to transport CT guests from the Port Jefferson Ferry to our village on Great South Bay. Again, if it wasn't "good enough," then those people wouldn't come. In that way, it was kind of like a destination wedding, because it required 'adventurous' parents' friends to take a chance on what the kids could put together. Those who came loved it. The big bucks were spent on the band, a notable swing music combo that, again, my mother-in-law knew from many years ago doing publicity for the earliest Newport Jazz Festivals. One of her friends reprised her big band singing days on a few tunes, and wife & I did a duet of Cole Porter's "You're the Top." I recall writing an unsurpassed number of $80-120 checks throughout, and I think things added up to just under $4500. The band cost $800. Considering that had a steady weekly gig at Jimmy Ryan's and included recording artists & writers of note, it was a generous courtesy discount. We were divorced 8 years later, but on that day "a good time was had by all." [/QUOTE]

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