But we were living in Europe at the time, and the wedding was going to be in Maryland, so we had to get a wedding coordinator to make it go well. And she introduced us to florists, chefs, photographers, etc....
She helped make that wedding the best it could possibly be, and I don't regret any of the money we spent. Nor does my wife. That was one of the best events we have ever participated in, and over the decades we still get positive comments from our friends who were present there.
So, yeah. It was a lot of money. But we feel it was money well spent.
It's one of the few smart things to spend money on.
Precisely why I prefer small intimate events with my friends and don’t want a big event like a wedding.
And yet, during both those times you will have no meaningful engagement with all those people you care about.
If you want your wedding to be a meaningful event, you need to keep it small; the larger a party[1] is, the less engagement the host will get with the average attendee.
[1] You shouldn't forget that a wedding is nothing more than an expensive party that everyone else will forget.
This was not my experience at all, for what it's worth.
You had a large number of guests and meaningfully engaged with all of them?
So? I didn't assert that you wouldn't remember, I asserted that in a large party the host cannot meaningfully engage with everyone.