Love on a Shoestring: Our $150 Wedding

In the late '70s I lived in Appalachia, where I learned of an old custom. Guests used to bring thin layers of molasses cake to a wedding. The bride's mother or aunts stacked the layers upon one another, cementing them with apple butter or jam. You could tell how popular a couple was by the height of their "stack cake." When I lived there the stack-cake custom had gone the way of the local version of a shivaree, when neighbors would collect the bride and groom on their wedding night and run them down the railroad tracks in a wheelbarrow. But the uncomplicated Appalachian weddings I witnessed—simple ceremonies in a country church with cake and mints in the basement after—are just as memorable to me as splashier weddings I've attended since then.

We know other couples who, like us, have married out of the mainstream. One couple married on horseback in the backcountry near Grand Teton National Park, one by a mountain lake near Laramie. Another had a quick living-room wedding after Christmas to accommodate visiting relatives. The rise of "Internet ministers" has made this type of wedding more common. Three acquaintances of ours have availed themselves of an online ordination process that authorizes them to perform legal marriages.

While nearly $30,000 may buy more glitz, it can't buy more joy or romance. Our own wedding in the woods was intimate, dreamy and definitely one-of-a-kind. We snow shoed a short distance into the trees and found a pine alcove for our chapel. Our Unitarian-Universalist minister read some inspirational passages we had chosen, we exchanged our own vows and we kissed. Two friends photographed the ceremony with a digital camera and surprised us by popping open a bottle of champagne they'd carried into the woods in a backpack. Throughout the ceremony, light from the sun and clouds patterned through snow-laden trees. The usual Wyoming wind was absent.

Afterward we enjoyed a simple dinner at a cozy café, complete with wood stove, in Centennial, a town of 100 at the base of the Snowy Range. A few weeks later, we ordered a special cake from a bakery and e-mailed an open invitation to our friends for a potluck dinner, minus gifts. We have a marriage certificate and an online photo album to share with family and friends. The final rundown: Marriage license: $25. Dinner for five: $60. Minister's snowshoe rental: $15. Flowers: $25. Champagne: $10. Cake: $15. Online photo album: free. Total: $150.

We even had a flower dog.

Baptiste lives in Laramie, Wyo.

© 2007