Let me begin by saying that I am married and we did do the wedding, but we did not do a "traditional" wedding. My husband and I were together for over 6 years before we got married and made the decision that to have a sit down reception, church, ceremony, flowers, invitations, wedding faours, etc was just too much for us. Honestly as you said, are people really going to miss 5 chocolate covered almonds?

The reality for us was that quite a few people got married the same year we did, we had the issues of if this person could come another couldn't, where would we have it, and when it would not interferre with someone elses. There were 5 different weddings we went to the year of ours and frankly it was just too dang expensive for everyone we wanted to come much less for us to afford everything.

Due to this we started looking at other options. Like you we were wondering if people would really be hurt without a "gift" and how do we afford everything that is going on? We came up with a wedding cruise. We went with Royal Carribian and if you contact them about what you are doing here are just a few of the things that are covered that you don't have to worry about!

If you have 8 cabins or more filled, everyone gets cookies and milk, or chips for the casino, or a bottle of wine. This is a nice "gift" that you can say is from you! For every 8 cabins full someone can go free, this allowed my husband and I to go for free! They will seat you all together for dinners so you can have 3-7 nights (depending on the length of your cruise). Food is covered for the entire trip with their cruise package, as well as drinks (they have various packages so everyone can pick their own).

The cruise group also covered the location for the weding/flowers/the pastor/champaign/cake/photographer for about $3,000. If you wanted to do your wedding prior to the boat take off you could do it as well, we did ours on the second day of the cruise. If you do it prior to the take off people can come for the wedding but not go on the cruise! (We didn't know about this option until after quite a few people had already booked, but I think we may have used this option.)

Out of the weddings we went to the funny part is that more people remember and talk about ours than they do their own when we are together. Part of our thinking was that we know personally we spent easily $500-800 for a weekend to go to someone's wedding, by the time we got there, got a hotel, fast food for the 2 days, and then headed home. With the cruise people who took the time to come actually got to do something other than sit in the hotel room.

Our wedding gifts were the outfits that people wore in the wedding. I had a white sun dress, the girls wore sun dresses from Victoria Secret (they were on sale for $35 and I have seen pictures of all of my brides maids in them again), the groomsmen all wore Calvin Klein kakhi's and Geoffrey Bean Hawaiian shirts (both bought for $35 total), and again we have seen all the grooms men in them since the wedding.

If you have unlimited funds you are in better shape than us! We really enjoyed the laid back setting, and the point in reference to your question is that people are not going to remember wheather you gave them a wedding gift or not. They will remember the time they spent with you and the family!

As you can see in the picture below our wedding was in no way traditional but guess what? We had a BLAST! This is your day, I noticed you had asked about colors etc in other requests... This is your day, do what you want!