Reflections on our wedding

• Rachel and I married on June 9th, 2023.
• We’d been dating for ~8 months, which is pretty short — I think the wedding came as something of a surprise, especially since Rachel was pretty young at the time (20).

• We’d both organized large events before (we’d met while organizing a 4-day, 300 person conference); so the idea of entertaining folks was not that

• We use technology & venues we were familiar with, rather than specialized wedding stuff
• Our wedding website as a Notion page: ☀️Rachel & Austin’s Wedding
• Our RSVP & CRM was Airtable
• Our “gifts registry” was our own website, Manifund
• It was important to me to have a traditional Catholic wedding, ie in a cathedral
• Rachel’s mom felt strongly that there should be more events, as a large chunk of her family would be flying in from out of town. So we ended up doing a pre-wedding get together in Dolores Park, and a post-wedding brunch & pickleball.
• Essentially, we got to go park-hopping, making use of one of SF’s abundant natural resources.

• Statistically, a couple is more likely to stay together if their wedding has many attendees, and also if their wedding is cheaper. Of course, the number of attendees is generally correlated with price. So the trick is to figure out how to accomodate a lot of folks cheaply.
• Of course, you shouldn’t plan on being a statistically average couple; realistically we just liked the vibe of doing things on a budget, but well
• Our venues were very cheap: the ceremony held at a Catholic cathedral was $X000; the reception at the park cost $X00; the bonfire was free

Other things to write about:

• The pamphlet
• The questions
• The food