First marriage was by a judge at the local courthouse in Guam. No family. We had to borrow witnesses from the wedding ahead of us (Linda & I had never been married before, what did we know?) which we repaid by doing camera duty for them. The 'reception" was happy hour at the officers club on base. ("Hey, guess what, I just got married! No, I am NOT shitting you, here, see, ring and all! To this guy, Jack—I'm sorry, have you not met Jack before?")

There were a few reasons, but one of them was not letting our respective mothers take over a wedding delayed.

I made it up to my mother the next marriage. Mom got to go to the wedding and see the proposal, which was a surprise to Mom and Deb (Deb knew it was coming, the timing was unexpected).