I had a courthouse wedding, in the gazebo of the courthouse with a judge who looked like Stan Lee. All the dogwood, redbud and magnolia trees were blooming and it was a warm, sunny April afternoon. I wore a hot pink Ann Taylor dress, and carried a bouquet made by my supermarket.

Then my family and several friends had tapas and sangria, and then we went sans family + more friends to a local bar. Then we went home.

Still haven't a ring or a honeymoon, but we are just as married, and it was a lovely day.

FYI it needn't be complicated. Many mortgage brokers can give you an estimate of closing costs etc. pull your credit reports first to see if everything is decent, look at some rate comparisons and ask for a full estimate of costs.

I'm just wondering whether we need to be married for my (excellent) credit score to have an impact on the refi, or if being engaged is enough.

carried a bouquet made by my supermarket.

I'm totally making my bouquet (and Tim's boutonniere) from supermarket roses. (But I'm paranoid, so I'm doing a test bouquet before the wedding. Like, months before.) We don't have a wedding party, so there are no other bouquets/boutonnieres to worry about, and we aren't doing flower arrangements on the tables, so flowers are not an issue.

Like I said, lazy and efficient. C'est moi.

Marriage does not have any bearing. However, you will need to be on the title for the house. The only reason to wait to start the process is 1) interest rates - but I have no idea what they are doing.

2) for your name change if it is coming.

I wasn't going to do real flowers at all but I have a friend who is a (really very fancy) florist in Belgium who couldn't make it for the wedding and, as a present, he got the florist who he'd interned with here to do flowers for us. It didn't really come together until kind of the last minute so I'd also had a friend's sister make a paper flower bouquet. I still have that and it's still gorgeous. The real flowers were very lovely too but not something I would have spent money on if I had had to pay for them myself. Oh! And another friend who couldn't make it send leis from her home in Hawaii. So nice and, again, not something I would have thought of doing myself.

We cased the small town/village in Vermont where we eloped the day before our wedding, and found a florist. We also went to city hall that day to get the paperwork started.

The next day, we slept in, went to a nearby spa, had massages and whatnot, hit the florist on the way back, bought what looked pretty, went back to the B&B and made a bouquet, got our pictures taken, got married, fed each other cake, did it, and then went out to dinner at the place next to the B&B.

Great fucking day.

I'd also had a friend's sister make a paper flower bouquet. I still have that and it's still gorgeous.

I have to admit, the brooch bouquet trend? I think they're GORGEOUS. But I wouldn't spend the $$$ on one (they're pricey, although I think they're priced fairly commensurate to their workmanship and materials). Making one would save money, but only in the sense that it would probably cost $100-150 to make, rather than $300-500 to buy.

And we are so tight on space that I prefer a flower bouquet that I can compost rather than a brooch bouquet, however lovely, that I would keep. Because I don't know where I would keep it, and it deserves to not go in the attic.

Great fucking day.

AND you had a killer dress. You and Tom looked so damn great.

I do love my coworkers. I hear the guy next to me talking a caller about a "bad bondage experience" (he was worried that the other 1/2 was going to report him for rape. *gulp* She wasn't, it was ok, but he was concerned.) I turn to the gal on my left and say "that right there is why I always use clear voice in my sex play. Code words can get so confusing." We laugh. Laughing is good.

eta: probably funnier in the context that our agency is currently switching over from 10-codes to clear voice in dispatching almost all calls.

Some of my friends were adamant about keeping their fathers' names. I've always missed the point of that, from a feminism stance--your father's name, your husband's name--it still a male relative's name. If you're so against taking a man's name, take your mom's name--oh, wait.

Why is a man's name his own and a woman's name her father's? This is MY name, its on the title. If my last name had been Mott because my parents liked applesauce it wouldn't be applesauce's name or the company's name or the guy who founded the company's name it would be mine.

Why is a man's name his own and a woman's name her father's? This is MY name, its on the title. If my last name had been Mott because my parents liked applesauce it wouldn't be applesauce's name or the company's name or the guy who founded the company's name it would be mine.

That's what I was trying to say last night. Possibly I was addled by pizza and beer. And ice cream with sprinkles. Those sprinkles, man. They'll getcha.

Part of it was I didn't particularly feel my adopted father's name *was* MY name. I've never felt particularly rooted, not in heritage, genetic or culture, not in family--all my parents' siblings had their kids a generation before me. I was held in a sort of absent fondness by their families; some of those people holding remnants of the societal beliefs that both adoption and bastardy were shameful and best ignored when possible. Add to that my trenchant introspection and dislike of groups of people, and well, there didn't seem a lot of value to my father's family's *name*. Then of course, he, like my mom, was illegitimate, so their family names were only extended to them as a courtesy, anyway.

If you feel attached to your family heritage and name, if it's important to you, then it has great value, and I understand how difficult the choice can be.

I only intended to provide another point of view--a pretty singular one, I admit.