Along with the many choices wedding couples face, now there's an option to not have -- and not pay for -- a full wedding but instead direct funds to a different big goal: perhaps a dream honeymoon in an exotic location with first-class airfare, suites suited for royalty, over-the-water bungalows and breathtaking excursions with VIP indulgences.

"After months of trying to work the numbers with our budget, trying to justify a $60,000 wedding day so that we can have several hundred roses and a lobster dinner for the 200+ guests on our (and our parents') lists, we decided to not have a wedding but instead hold up our dream honeymoon as our top priority," says recent bride Shea McCattam.

"We got a lot of blowback at first," says Shea's now-husband, Paul. "People wanted us to have a big wedding, and they weren't shy about telling us what we should do. Sixty-thousand dollars is a lot of money to put toward giving other people pretty Instagram photos for their feeds and their affiliate links, as in, 'Click here to buy my wedding shoes, and I'll get paid!' I may be cynical, but I've been to too many weddings where the wedding couple is barely spoken to by guests. They're all outside taking selfies and photos in the gardens."

Shea and Paul instead spent two weeks in London and a week in Finland for their extended honeymoon and had some money left over for a down payment on a house. "We weren't going to have that post-wedding depression that some of my friends got because their center-of-attention time was over," says Shae. "And we weren't going to have those arguments that couples have when wedding planning stress makes them nuts. We just saved up for our goals and made sure we were each completely OK with not having a fancy wedding. Our values matched, and our honeymoon was beyond amazing as a result."

Some might say it's not romantic to skip the wedding or that you'll regret not having all of your loved ones together in celebration of you. Recent bride Toni Galso says: "We had a big wedding, and although we had to put off our honeymoon for a year to save up, we find it was worth it to have had our grandparents, parents and all of our loved ones all dressed up, dancing and spending quality time with one another. Shortly after our wedding, my husband's grandmother died, and we took some comfort in knowing that she had a day away from her nursing home to delight everyone on the dance floor, enjoy the food, smile and take wonderful photos with her grandkids and great-grandkids." Galso says it was worth every penny.

Money might not be the only reason to skip the wedding and go for the big-budget honeymoon. "Some people just don't like being the center of attention and having expectations placed on them," says Camille Cerria, nautical event planner at Smooth Sailing Celebrations. "Sometimes, a couple isn't quite like everyone in their family and friends' circle. They don't enjoy a loud, fist-pumping wedding but instead like quiet beauty and calm settings." It could be just the two of them on a tropical beach at sunset, or it could be a whittled-down gathering of a dozen relatives and friends enjoying a cocktail cruise or a desserts-only party in a pretty setting.

This is a big decision -- one that has to work for the couple now and years down the road. Skipping a wedding may be perfect for who the couple is and where they are in their lives right now, but as the years glide by, regrets may set in. You wouldn't have that wonderful picture of Grandma all dressed up and dancing with a huge smile on her face if her wedding didn't exist. You may regret not having those golden moments, like the walk down the aisle and your love's first glimpse of you.

"Don't forget, though, that people have been having destination weddings for years," says Cerria. A recent survey from wedding planning website The Knot says that 23% of weddings are destination weddings, so there's already a sizable trend for bringing along a dozen loved ones to scale down the day, spending less and having a wedding that's your style. "It's all about choices," says Cerria. "A destination wedding could cost twice what a hometown, traditional wedding costs, so that style doesn't automatically mean savings. There's no perfect solution to tackle the cost-of-wedding issue."

Consider it a sliding scale; do what feels right now, and know that you can always renew your wedding vows a few years from now to have that big, splashy wedding on a fresh budget, complete with all the photos you could ever want and thousands of roses. If your goals of a dreamy honeymoon and a down payment on a house have already been achieved, the big wedding might come later.