My late, lamented, drive-thru wedding

Fifty dollars. That's all a wedding license costs in California. Not only that, for another fifty the County will perform the service on the grounds of its handsome old administration building on San Diego bay. Throw in another ten bucks for a commemorative digital picture and you have every sensitive man's dream: The $110 wedding. California, being California, you can almost do it as a drive-through.

Even the paperwork is ridiculously simple. For example, you're asked if you've been married within the last ninety days. You say no, that's enough proof. And if you want Uncle Mort to perform the service, even though he has no qualifications other than having money you hope to inherit, that's OK too for another $50. If you need a witness, the county will throw in a witness.

But, then, what if one of you is Mexican and has an uncountable number of cousins, aunts and uncles, nieces and nephews, grandmothers and grandfathers, who are all expecting a party/fiesta? Can you leave them out and just have bride, groom, and a witness? Would they be offended or wonder how many months she is "along"? What if one of the two of you, who shall go nameless, never really had a proper wedding and would like to be surrounded by her family?

So that's when I had my first really bad idea. Why not invite them all, the entire extended family, to the wedding? To do so would have absolutely no cost. Big wedding, $110. My Scotch/Jewish soul twitched with delight. So out went the word via Latina Express (aka, cellphone)—come to my wedding!

After that, my perfect, cheap-ass plan started to go terribly, terribly wrong. First, there was the requirement for a "new, gray suit." $425. The discussion went something like this:

You need to buy a new gray suit.
Why? I already have a gray suit in the closet somewhere. I don't need a new suit.
You need to buy a new gray suit.
[silence]
OK

Then, a professional photographer must be hired (I still haven't found one: the silly buggers want $1500 minimum to cover a wedding). Printed invitations for distant or important members of the family. Transportation.

But the hammer really dropped when it became clear to me that, after the word went out, there had to be a reception where I was expected to feed everyone. I could not invite all those people to the wedding without feeding them. Isn't done! Nor was there any way to feed just part of them: if they were invited to the wedding, they would be fed. Period. So I said, why not my favorite San Diego restaurant, Ristaurante Baci? The waiters wear tuxedos and speak Spanish/English/Italian. Let's do it right. I'm damned if I'm going to have a reception at a hotel or the Hometown Buffet (although, in my temptation, they are as cheap as manure on a warm summer's day)!

Damned. That's the operative word to describe me — damned. Every forty guests at Baci will end up costing around $1,800. How many are actually going to come? This is unclear, especially when you use the Latina Invitation Service to spread the word. That cat violently refuses to go back into its bag. I have the shredded forearms to prove it. Then, there's the mariachis that I would actually like to have, but I have no idea what they might cost. No one is asking me for them, they're my idea. Plus there will have to be flowers, and what about a stupid wedding cake? So my $110 wedding that seemed such a good, thrifty idea at the time is a distant memory while I tear my hair out selling mutual funds as the market dives. You'll hear me muttering to myself, "Yo preferiría vivir en pecado" or "¿Es demasiado tarde para fugarse?" (My poor Spanish translates, roughly, to "I would prefer to live in sin" and "Is it too late to elope?")

A Much Better Wedding Estimate