On Having a "Smaller" Wedding

When we first started the wedding planning process about a year ago we really had no idea what size of wedding we would be looking at. Both Joe and I come from relatively large families. His with lots of cousins and mine with lots of aunts and uncles. At first I figured we'd just invite everyone (rookie mistake), but once we wrote out a preliminary list of friends and family we each thought would be invited the list was close to 300 - YIKES! So, needless to say we talked a lot and scaled back some and came to a number closer to 230.

Then I really started to think and get overwhelmed. 230 people is a lot of people, and a big portion of them may be family you're not as close to, or family-friends that were around when you were in diapers ages ago, and so on. Did I really want to be walking around my wedding reception just meeting people for the first time, or catching up on years that had gone by? It didn't sound very enjoyable to me or Joe, so we started talking about reducing our list again.

When we really started legitimately looking at planning the wedding, my mom and I had the budget conversation. After that we realized our guest list would have to be shrank down anyway to fit within our budget. The number we came out with was 150 with a little wiggle room (175 max). This was almost like a little weight had been lifted and then a bigger one placed back on. I was relieved that the wedding would be smaller than we originally thought, but then I started worrying about who would be left out, and if we would be hurting anyone's feelings. (If you haven't picked up on it, I worry about everything.) 

As the wedding gets closer more people are curious about the exact plans. When they ask how many guests and I tell them around 150, more often than not they say something to the affect of "ohhhhhh that's kind of small". And I smile and nod and explain how we want our guests to have a great time, but stay in budget and so on and so forth. Mostly I just get flustered. I don't want anyone to think they would purposefully be left out of my and Joe's big day. We've really only had one or two instances of someone getting seriously down on us about not including every single person in the universe, but I'd like to think they understand where we are coming from.

I know that 150 is still a lot of people. I think that any collection of people over 30 is huge, so it's incredible to me that we even know 150 people. I also know that in the end, the most important thing is celebrating our wedding day with the people that mean the most to us. The friends and family that have really shaped us, watched us grow, been with us through thick and thin, and been in our lives through our relationship and beyond will be there and are the ones we want to be surrounded by.

Ultimately I want our wedding to keep the focus on Joe and I. I don't mean that in a bratty, self-centered sense - I just don't want things, like the guest list, to overshadow the real reason that there is a wedding in the first place.