My fiancé and I have chosen to have a courthouse marriage for many reasons. 1) He's in the Army 2) I'm in school 3) He leaves for Korea in May 4) We need time to save money before we can pay for a ceremony. I want to make our courthouse wedding special, but not too special because we are going to have a big ceremony once I am out of school. Does anyone have any ideas on how to achieve this? Please help because I am basically clueless.
Thanks,
Carrie

Hi, Carrie!

One thing that I can think of would be to have someone bring a simple instrument like a guitar or keyboard to play and also maybe someone could also sing one or two selections for that particular ceremony.

Hopefully, others will be along to address your question.

Thanks!

Hi Carrie,

You haven't given much info to go on, but I'll do my best with suggestions, and also ask you some questions.

::How many people are in your bridal party?---or is there one, or just a witness?

::How many people will be attending?

::I'm assuming this is a day time ceremony, does the courthouse you are going to allow you to put up any decorations?

:: Is this going to be very casual, or somewhat formal, and do you already have your dress?

:: Is there a certain theme you want?

:: What colors do you like, and what kind of style?

It's a little hard to determine, without a little more info, exactly what you are needing help with.

I will take a stab in the dark on a few things.

If you don't have a dress right now, you might want to look into renting one, since you are going to have a bigger ceremony later. If you don't have a place available where you can rent, you would probably be surprised at the dresses you can find in second hand stores, or even somewhere like Walmart. You can always buy one for a decent price, and then accessorize it with many different things.

If you want idea's on flowers, well I can give you many idea's on things you can do very inexpensively, from bridal bouquets to courthouse flowers, that you could take with you to wherever you are going afterwards.

If you want ideas on inexpensive decorations for the courthouse, I could give you some ideas there also.

Again, if you could give us a clue as to what you are needing help with, it would be much easier to help you.

Until then, I will leave it at the bare basics, and await more details.

:)

It may depend on the courthouse, locally, you will be either standing in line or sitting outside the judges office with 3 to 10 other couples all getting married one right after the other.

You walk into his office, he reads a 3 min service and you walk out.
There is really no special time except you are married.

Starbuck8,
Here are some details...
There are going to be about 24 people there with two being me and my fiancé.
I was thinking about having my sister and my fiance's best man standing beside us, but that would be it.
I don't think the courthouse allows me to put decorations up, so I can't do that.
For flowers, I was thinking just a bouquet for me (if that).
My fiancé wants to wear his ACU (which are the camo uniforms that soldiers wear everyday), so I don't really want to have a full out wedding dress. I was thinking a little white sun dress or something like that.
I want it to be a very casual event since we will be having a formal wedding in a few years.
I don't know about the color scheme yet. The only person who will be in color will really me my sister. My fiancé and his best man will more than likely both be in ACUs and I will be in white, so I was thinking I would just let me sister go pick out a solid color dress and go with that.
I don't want people to think this is our big ceremony or anything, so I don't want to put too much thought in it. But I also want to make it special because it is a major event in both of our lives, I just don't know exactly how to do that.