Pressures around Church weddings

I ticked Civil Service, even though it was in a church:
I'll try and explain that:

I live in Norway and I'm married to a Norwegian.
She is awesome, and in many ways on the same wave-length as myself, including attitudes to weddings.

She had been married once before, and thanks to the pressure of the MIL of the time, she was put through a massive church wedding much to her dismay. It appeared that the MIL had insisted on a large wedding because she wasn't able to have one when she was married. I'm still in disbelief when the now Mrs. Rawr tells me this story, it does seem that there can be an awful lot of projected selfishness for relatives when it comes to things like other peoples weddings.

It annoys me no end to hear of other people inflicting their wishes upon these couples, not only in the choice of venue, but in every concievible detail regarding their 'Big Day Out'.

Fast forward a few years to myself and Mrs. Rawr getting married. We had been in agreement long before talk of marriage was on the table. We would go somewhere hot, use the Norwegian Sailors-Church to get an officially Norwegian wedding there (saving some hassle with local authorities), and then go somewhere for drinks after with friends we had selected as witnesses.

No parents, or other family members would be invited. We knew that although there were many sound members of the family who would be fun to have there, and would not kick up fuss, but we were guaranteed problems from some others who we couldn't *not* invite, without causing more drama. Thus the simple solution was to invite no-one and keep it small.

We went to the south of Spain, which was as far as we could afford to physically get from Norway or Ireland. This eliminated any question as to why people weren't really invited, and also allowed us to double it into a fairly inexpensive honeymoon. We used a Norwegian Sailors-church there to get married, mostly to get the marriage officiated in Norwegian law. Neither of us could give a damn about the god part, which barely even got a mention in the quick half-hour service.

Shortly after, the new Mrs. Rawr, myself and our small group of 4 friends went down the road and ended up drinking with a group of drunken Swedish people. We had a hell of a fun time, which trumped anything a damned reception could have supplied.

Her father and my parents were in complete support of our plan, and even wished they had thought of it doing it this way themselves. This seemed to be the reaction of many we had told. Her mother, and now my MIL, wasn't as enthusiastic, although that was mostly down to her not being supplied a stage to be the center of attention. We didn't care.

Myself, Mrs, Rawr agree that this was a very stress-free and awesome way to get married and suited our personalities down to a tee. And in the end, I think that's what this kind of very personal event should be about. It should be about the couple and their personalities, not the self-centered wishes / demands / or attempts at emotional-blackmail that sometimes come with weddings.