*why (this wedding)

(the fun part, by jaime)

It all really began back in January 2008, when Chris and I were driving back from my younger brother’s wedding in Tahoe. We were chatting about weddings with our friend Chelsea Spencer when suddenly, inspiration hit. We decided the world’s most perfect wedding would be a road trip, with a tour bus, tour tee shirts, and groupies… visiting several cities and our bestest friends and family along the way. We swore Chelsea to secrecy and vowed never to reveal our idea to anyone.

Six months later, a little buzzed, I told my younger brother and his wife. I guess I can’t keep a secret… We all laughed at the idea and then promptly buried it. Who knew that it would resurface in a different form in January 2009? All it took was a little nudging from my friend Jodi to finally pull the trigger…

(the fun part, by chris)

I totally knew Jaime was going to tell someone. She can’t keep a secret even if you pay her… (believe me, I’ve tried.)

(the emotional part by jaime)

When Chris and I sat down and talked about what was important to us in planning our wedding, certain themes kept surfacing:

• We wanted to spend one-on-one, quality time with people at our wedding.
• We did not want to spend a huge chunk of change on one day.
• We wanted our wedding to be about the importance of our commitment, not just the festivities surrounding it.

Initially, our ideal wedding was completely impractical; 100+ people that we love and care about, vacationing in the same hot tropical destination for an entire week.  While this might have worked in 2008, it’s just completely impractical now that we’re all 2009 recessionistas.

(the emotional part, by chris)

I just didn’t want to spend my entire wedding day making small talk with people who had spent thousands of dollars to attend. It just seemed ridiculous to me.

(the money part by jaime and chris)

Initially, we decided that we would plan a simple wedding in the city where we currently live, San Francisco. We are not conventional by nature,  so we decided to forgo:

• Boutonnieres
• Bouquets
• Attendants and Attendant Gifts
• Printed Save the Date cards
• Flowers
• Videographer
• Cake
• Limo Rental

According to CostofWedding, our stripped down wedding would still cost between $18,466 and $30,744, with $24,605 being the average.

Think that’s the total cost of the wedding? Maybe for us. If we’re lucky. Our out of states guests, on the other hand, would have to throw down serious cash to attend our festivities. As we started to add up the costs (a thousand dollars per person was the average), we realize what we were up against.

When we first introduced the road trip idea to our parents, they were non-plussed. Several conversations later, we hit upon a compromise. Chris and I would pool our resources to go on a six-week road trip around the country to see friends and family so that they wouldn’t have to fly out to attend the wedding. When we returned, we would have a ceremony on the beach and a dinner for the ceremony guests.

The ceremony/party- appeases our parents.

The road trip- allows us to share our wedding with up to 250 people. The cost to them?  Nominal.  Even if every person we visited bought us dinner once, it would cost a total of $6,000 for them, at a mere 25 dollars a person!

And the cost to us? A car rental (we got a car donated by Ford-free!) , gasoline ($1000 on average for 11,000 miles), and food/sundries for eight weeks ($3000 at $50 a day). Even if we need to spend ten of our nights at hotels, our cost would only increase by $1000.

Total cost? $5000.