My wedding fantasies were more Jean-Luc Godard than Modern Bride. There was usually a getaway car involved, lots of cigarettes, and a guy with a quiff. I dreamed my wedding would take place in the Metropolitan Museum’s Temple of Dendur. My poodle-skirted, black-leather-clad guests and I would be dancing in and around the sandstone temple, underneath the watchful eye of Isis, the capo di tutti capo of all goddesses. One thing that hasn’t changed is my ability to dream big. Dreaming big is one thing. Paying for it is quite another. At 44, I was one of the last among my friends to marry.
According to costofwedding.com, the bare-bones cost of nuptials in Kingston is $42,257. This includes clothing for the bride and groom, basic flowers, basic food, and the venue. It doesn’t include designer duds, vintage quaff, or nifty food—nifty costs extra. In Brooklyn, where we actually did marry, this would have been $61,164.
If money is no object, put this article down immediately and book everyone who did TomKat’s wedding. If not, read on about how my husband and I brought our bill down to about $1,000, including clothes, dinner, cake, and flowers.
It was the day after Thanksgiving of 2001 when we decided to get married—on New Year’s Eve. And so the race was on.
The first thing to do is decide where to splurge and where to save. For us, it was largely about the food and wine. For someone else, it might be about flowers, music, or a favorite place. Whatever your focus is, organize your wedding around the most expensive (and important) aspect of it and work your way backward. For some people, it might be about flying friends and relatives in to attend. I am a lifelong thrift shopper and yard-sale aficionado, so going that route for my wedding attire made perfect sense.
As a woman who had been with her then-boyfriend for six years, something long and white was just silly. Red leather was out of my budget—so what was next? Well, I found a ballet-length pewter satin skirt for $20 in a thrift store, and at another, a bustier with silver satin, black tulle, and lavender and green beading for $50. At a jewelry supply store (rather like Woodstock’s Bead Emporium) I found a pair of sterling silver pterodactyl earrings for $15. And for $2, a tiara from a stoop sale (Brooklyn’s yard sale equivalent) rounded off the accessories. I already had a Persian lamb coat to don for the journey from house to ceremony ($20). Eric wore traditional navy blue pants and a gray tweed jacket and a skinny 1950s tie I’d gotten him at a stoop sale and a toy praying mantis in his lapel. Thrift-store wedding dresses, unless you really luck out, are one thing I don’t advise—mostly out of superstition, and my obsession with the stories around the clothing. Why is this dress here, in this thrift store? Did the marriage fail? Would my marriage fail if I wore it? Was the bride so hardhearted she just wanted the tax deduction?
For selfish as well as economic reasons, we had our reception at home: We wouldn’t have to wear shoes at our reception, and our cats could come. And home was, simply, home. It spoke of the life Eric and I had crafted together, antique chocolate molds adorning the dining room; secondhand furniture mingled with antiques throughout the house; dining room windows looking out on the backyard, the scene of many a stray cat rescue. Ivan the Terrible, oldest and most alpha cat, hosted our wedding. Black and white, he glided around the reception like a seasoned maitre’d, only with a much better tail. Two months later, at 17, Ivan died. His attendance at our wedding is a treasured memory. We weren’t as lucky when it came to our parents. Marrying when we did, our parents had died years before.
Eric’s immaculately coiffed, redheaded mother was a lawyer, with a palate keener than my own, who should have been a restaurant critic. My father was an old-school journalist whose youngest child (me) loved him fiercely. Had they been alive, they would have been the two biggest naysayers about the do-it-yourself aspect of our wedding. Eric’s mother would have dragged me shopping at Neiman-Marcus for a dress, and had her hairdresser in situ on the big day. She might have let me cook—but she would never have let me bake the cake. My overprotective father, on the other hand, would have been calling me constantly to make sure the cake hadn’t collapsed. I will always be grateful for the fact I knew and loved the woman who would have been my mother-in-law, and regretful that my parents and husband never had the chance to know one another. Their absence was a strong presence that day.
If you do your own wedding, some of your nearest and dearest will tell you you’re nuts. Expect it, and stick to your guns. It’s your wedding, after all. My friends have had weddings featuring everything from $20,000 gowns and ice sculptures at Leonard’s to picnics and bare feet in Brooklyn. Some of the friends with the fancier weddings didn’t have time to sit down and eat, or visit with their guests. We got to do plenty of both.
For the culinarily inclined, preparing the food yourself can be a huge cost cutter. It’s relaxing, fun, and you can have exactly what you want. My advice? Cook in stages, do as much as far in advance as possible, and be honest about your culinary skills. If you make a mean chili, go for it and go all out. If you’ve never roasted an entire pig, now is not the time to experiment. I made macaroni and cheese—albeit truffled macaroni and cheese, with 10 different kinds of cheese. This was easy, because all of the cheese could be cut up and grated, the pasta cooked, and the béchamel made two days in advance. Our appetizers were gravlax and blinis, with roast garlic puree on crostini for the vegetarians. A plain green salad accompanied the mac ’n’ cheese.
Then there was the cake. I chose a light, white cake, my favorite, from The Fannie Farmer Cookbook. I enhanced its flavor with lime, lemon, tangerine, and grapefruit zest, and a passionfruit buttercream. It was a project unto itself. Tiered cakes, replete with fondant and buttercream, are surprisingly heavy, and require architectural supports in the form of dowels, and cakeboards between the layers. Though I bake quite well, a wedding cake is a specialty I can’t lay claim to. Mine was a three-tiered beauty, and I never worried once about how it would taste, because I knew.
We nixed a DJ and music in general. It was a small wedding, about 25 guests, and music would have seemed more an intrusion than an enhancement. There was a song I’d always wanted playing when I walked down the aisle—but there was no aisle. We also decided against photographs, since we both despise having our picture taken. That’s something we regret.
Some shopping advice: If you don’t want to spend a fortune, don’t expect traditional wedding trappings. The bridal bouquet is probably not in your cards, but with help from a sympathetic florist, or a DIY approach such as Stems has, beautiful flowers are well within reach. At the bakery, steer away from the tiered wedding cakes. Find out what the bakery’s specialty is—pound cakes? Gingerbread? Cupcakes? Sandwich cookies? If you’re using a caterer, think away from full-course meals. Consider a cocktail party, high tea, or brunch instead.
When it came to flowers, for my bouquet and for the house, I sought the help of a local florist simpatico enough not to charge extra. We designed a lovely bouquet of anemones, baby’s breath, and sweetheart roses. Too bad I forgot it, and left it in the refrigerator at home. Fat lot of good it did me.
Was our home transformed? Not at all. It looked like home, only tidier and with more flowers and candles. We were drinking champagne and eating truffled macaroni and cheese on our laps. Everybody who wanted leftovers got them.
On our final morning as a single couple, I made us a Trailer Trash Breakfast of fried eggs and biscuits with sausage gravy, and we watched “Jerry Springer.” We met our family and friends at the Municipal Building in Brooklyn, the equivalent of Kingston’s City Hall, for the ceremony.
The mood inside the Municipal Building was festive and anxious. The lines were long, the sale of single artificial roses, booming. It was finally our turn, and we went into the 1970s-era chapel. Our vows were over in a matter of a few minutes, and married life had begun.
In the five years since we made those vows, we’ve moved from Brooklyn to Dutchess County, and finally, to Woodstock, hopefully to stay. Soon it will be time to renew our vows, Woodstock-style. Here are the resolutions:
1. Wear red leather.
2. Don’t forget the bouquet.
Oh, and that song? I can hear Dave Edmunds singing now: “I Knew the Bride When She Used to Rock’n’Roll.”