Meet the couple who had four weddings to celebrate their nuptials costing $16k – and say it “wasn’t excessive” and they plan to renew their vows every few years.
Ashley Miller, 38, is originally from Los Angeles, Calif., while her partner, Larry Lansing, 41, grew up 2,824 miles away – in Troy, New York.
With their friends and family spread across the U.S., the couple decided rather than have one big do to opt for four smaller celebrations.
They decided to go to their friends and family – rather than have their guests come to them – and tied the knot in four separate weddings costing $16,098 in total.
Ashley, who works in event production, from Los Gatos, Calif., said: “Ultimately, the four different celebrations ended up happening in large part due to covid being such a thing.
“After the last few years and, looking at the fact that my husband and I have families living on opposite ends of the country, we decided to have these four different ceremonies.
“Most of my family live on the west coast of America and all of his family live on the east coast.
“Recognizing that we have family elders, and it was really important for us to share this day with us, instead of asking them to go anywhere, we brought the party to them.
“People loved it and thought it was a great thing to do.
“Our budget was not that much higher than if we managed to fit that many people in one location as it would have upped everything.”
For their first wedding – a legal ceremony – at the courthouse in Yolo, Calif., on Dec. 28, 2021, the couple donned jeans and jumpers.
Their union was witnessed by two friends – with one pal, Warren Venice, performing the ceremony as they held a license to wed couples.
Surrounded by their four friends, the wedding was a last-minute affair after driving home through a storm.
Ashley said: “That was us deciding that we were going to get married anyway.
“One of the friends we were with, it just so happens, is a minister who could perform the ceremony legally and the other was our witness.
“It was just the four of us – cracking up in jeans and sweaters.
“A very not formal affair which led to us wanting to do the bigger parties for our families.
“We wanted to celebrate with them more than on a phone call or a video call.
“We didn’t think it was excessive as we wanted the whole family to be able to celebrate with us.
“We are planning on renewing our vows every few years starting in 2024 and do another week’s celebration for all of our family and friends.
After telling their families, they got mixed reactions to the news they had got hitched.
Ashley said: “There was joy and congratulations but with my dad, there was that touch of disappointment that he didn’t get to be there.
“My dad is more traditional, there was some sadness to it but by the same token, it was completely in character, so it didn’t really surprise anybody.”
Their second wedding was at a venue in Troy, New York, US, with members of Larry’s family in attendance on May 21, 2022.
Ashley said: “This ceremony was for my husband’s family.
“It was at a very sweet venue. What I did was I focused on packages where most of it was being handled by the venue directly.
“All the spots that we got married in, all the spots we had a celebration in, we had never been to, we had never seen before getting there.
“Everything was done with huge amounts of faith and trust with everybody who was working on it.
“It was very sweet, it was a moment for me to meet a lot of his extended family that I had never really met before.
“I got to meet several of his childhood friends that I had heard stories about, it was probably the mellowest of all the events, a bit more talking than dancing.”
The third celebration was for Ashley’s family in Oregon, Portland, US, on June 11, 2022.
“There were about 30 to 35 members of my family there, which was another spot in terms of making it very personalized,” Ashley said.
“We made it very much about actually getting to talk to everybody that was there at the time.
“To smile and laugh, beyond the formal pictures that tend to happen at weddings.”
And their fourth and final big day was at the Little Vegas Chapel in July 2022 – with 38 of their closest friends.
The pair tied the knot in an Elvis Presley-themed chapel surrounded by 38 of their friends and went to the Cosmopolitan in Las Vegas to celebrate.
Ashley said: “We live in California, but Vegas is a really great option for people to be able to travel to.
“Honestly, my partner and I are at that level of goofy and playful that the idea of doing a wedding with Elvis is an utter delight – it was a complete blast.
“I highly recommend for anybody else in life to go the things you love – do the things that bring a smile to your face.”
Ashley said the beauty of having four weddings was that each one got to look and feel a lot different.
She said: “I wore something different to each of them.
“My spouse, for the New York and Portland events, wore a beautiful linen suit but for Vegas he went very over the top with a black and blue shiny suit.
“I got to wear three different lovely outfits for all of it, they matched our venues, and we got to sit and make our custom playlists.
“I work in entertainment – I MC’d all my events and picked the music for them all.”
Ashley said she and Larry, a software engineer, wanted to use the weddings as an opportunity to bring people together after covid-19.
Ashley said: “It was a chance for us to get to see people ranging from getting to see kids who have been growing up over the last couple of years to seeing our family elders.”
Produced in association with SWNS Talker.
