Our family pic after both my sister and I get married!
We both have families on the smaller side. To give you an example, I only have 3 cousins and my fiancé also comes from a smaller family, too. I'm the oldest out of all of my cousins and family friends, so none of my cousins or anyone in my family has gotten married or started families of their own yet. I know sometimes it's just impossible for people to have a small wedding simply because both the bride and groom have huge families!
Originally, my definition of small was 50 people. But, once we created our list, that just wasn't going to be possible. We are ending up right around 100 people, which I still would consider on the smaller side!
We could have easily had a 300 person wedding. We are lucky to know so many amazing people. But, I was adamant and put my foot down...I think there needs to be at least be one person in the mix who puts their foot down and draws a line so that the list doesn't get out of hand (or totally let it get out of hand if you want a huge wedding!).
We were thrilled that our parents supported our decision for a smaller wedding. I know it can be tough when parents on both sides are continuously adding to the list. We definitely encountered that and it's just something you have to work through with your families!
A lot of you have asked how to choose who you invite and who you don't and I don't think that's something that I can advise on- there are too many different situations so the only thing I can say is to do what you feel is best and right for you!
A lot of you have asked how to choose who you invite and who you don't and I don't think that's something that I can advise on- there are too many different situations so the only thing I can say is to do what you feel is best and right for you!
It helped a little, too, that our wedding venue runs on the smaller size so to have a seated dinner with the band/dance floor in the same room, we couldn't have really gone over 125 anyway.
We are so excited to celebrate with those nearest and dearest to us and are so thankful to be surrounded with so many incredible friends and family! Tell me, how many guests did you have at your wedding?!
8 comments:
My wedding is this October and I am having a smaller one as well (our venue limits us to 90 people). I had thought this would be easy with my fiance and I having smaller families too, but it has still been difficult to draw the line with "if we invite x, we have to invite y" and I still feel like I'm having to leave people out! I'm trying to just relax about it, but there's been push and pull about the guest list (from my mom mainly) that's making me feel like I'm being rude not inviting certain people, even if I haven't seen them for years!
We had about 200 at our wedding last May! I enjoyed having a lot of people there, but I could have went smaller and it may have eliminated some of the drama lol. There are always struggles with the guest list and who you invite, so try not to let people stress you out. Always remember, this day is about you and your husband:) Btw, I think you will LOVE having a spring wedding! I wasn't sure about having our wedding in the spring at first either and preferred a summer wedding. However, the weather was beautiful and I was able to incorporate my favorite flowers(Peonies and hydrangeas). Also, there are so many good spring color palettes. There is just something special about a spring wedding!
We had about 200 at our wedding last May! I enjoyed having a lot of people there, but I could have went smaller and it may have eliminated some of the drama lol. There are always struggles with the guest list and who you invite, so try not to let people stress you out. Always remember, this day is about you and your husband:) Btw, I think you will LOVE having a spring wedding! I wasn't sure about having our wedding in the spring at first either and preferred a summer wedding. However, the weather was beautiful and I was able to incorporate my favorite flowers(Peonies and hydrangeas). Also, there are so many good spring color palettes. There is just something special about a spring wedding!
Sydney, when my daughter got married, she felt the same way you do...her mother-in-law to be wanted to invite people that my daughter had never met. Thankfully, she stood her ground and politely told her that she didn’t want to be meeting throngs of people for the very first time at her wedding!
I got engaged right around the same time as you! We were originally going to get married next summer and invite about 150 guests. That would include all aunts and uncles and first cousins (5x the amount on his side than on mine) plus high school friends that I only see once a year, etc. However, we are paying for the wedding 100% ourselves and had a heart to heart about how we refused to go into debt and wanted to pay for the entire thing in cash, out of pocket, without using credit cards, etc. So we cut the guest list down and are only inviting 29 people. All in all, we are expecting to have about 25 total, including us, once the RSVPs come back. We also bumped it up to this fall. We are SO EXCITED and also feel so good financially -
we are still able to vacation this year and are planning a big European honeymoon for next year. Every couple is different in their priorities, and stress-free and financially feasible for us was top of the list!
Our families have been SO SUPPORTIVE. People who aren't invited are totally on board and completely understand, especially because so many of them have been married and felt that they overspent. We are so excited!
My now husband and I definitely encountered the problem of a growing list from our families. We both come from rather large extended families (from just one uncle I have 5 cousins who are all married with multiple kids each) and we're all rather close. This make the problem of keeping it smaller hard, and we ended up with about 175 in the final count, having invited over 250. My in-laws invited so many people I'd never met or met once (business associates and such) because they were returning the courtesy of being invited to their children's weddings. Good for you and your fiancé for standing your ground on knowing everyone and keeping it reasonable to you!
This was so fun to read! Probably the one regret I have from my wedding is how large it was. I treated it like a huge party and pretty much invited everyone I knew. I think we ended up at 500 guests. If I could go back and do it over I would have a very small, intimate group.
We had about 125 which was entirely too many. I only wanted 25 people. Closest family & close friends. My parents wanted to invite more so we did but quickly found out if you invite this one you “have” to invite that one blah blah blah. Then we had people put their kids on their Response cards & they were not invited!!! We had others put down “dates” when they were not in a relationship. We should have called & said the extras were not invited like I wanted but my parents didn’t want to hurt feelings. I wish I had all the money we wasted on those cheap people now for my home.
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