Oh Hell YES! Thanks for posting Jim!
I was also married before my wedding, in fact, we were even married before our Bachelor/Bachelorette party.
My wedding was a cheap untraditional halloween costume party complete with some of the most raucous punk bands in town. We didn’t have a dance, we had a mosh pit. My dress cost $100 and we splurged and bought ourselves a pair of converse sneakers. The rest of our tiny budget was spent feeding our guests and making sure they had plenty of drinks. It was a great party and you couldn’t mistake it for any other wedding but Mr and Mrs Bastard’s.
We spent the money we could have spent on a lavish wedding and got ourselves a teeensy little RV which we used for our honeymoon and subsequently to camp 7 months out of the year for years to come. Money well spent and I’m pretty happy that we spent money on something that lasts longer than a party.
On to baby showers, ugh. I’m at the age where all of my friends are procreating. I just send really boring practical gifts but I do think baby showers are useful to a new parent so I can’t complain. That being said, I usually skip the party itself since they’re usually already full of kids that convince me to give them endless piggyback rides (and super lame games, seriously, who makes this crap up?)
Now post secondary school showers (sounds borderline illegal), that’s a brilliant idea. I could have used one of those parties.
We’ve got our priorities all turned around.