My mom really wanted a much bigger wedding for me, but she was ok with my decision to have a small ceremony with only the immediate family. She organized a picnic 3 weeks later and invited all the aunts & uncles, so she sort of got her way.

I'm ok with any type of ceremony and if a couple doesn't have a lot of money for a big wedding and doesn't want to rack up debt for a big wedding, they are being fiscally responsible and that's a good sign for their future (not a guarantee of course). I liked our little ceremony and it was pretty much no fuss, and we have this nice little story now about how my husband, who is very quiet, took my mother aside and told her to stop bossing everyone especially his future wife around.

If I were to do it again I'd probably let Mom do the bigger wedding for me. I don't really regret having a small, low-stress wedding. But I feel differently about weddings now, after I missed a couple weddings of my cousins because they live too far away, but I was able to make the grueling drive to 3 funerals. There were too many relatives I only see at the funerals, and spouses & children that I only met at a funeral--or the one little girl that I never did meet. I met her little brother at her funeral.

I would like to see them at happier occasions. In recent years I have definitely made more of an effort to go to weddings when I'm invited, even if I don't know the couple all that well. I want to have more memories of weddings and happy occasions than memories of funerals.