My micro wedding (20 people) will be about 3 hours away for all of our guests (and some are coming from across the country), so I feel a lot of pressure to entertain everyone for the whole weekend, despite the small size. Our schedule is this: Friday night welcome dinner, Saturday morning spa treatments for most guests, Saturday afternoon hair and makeup (lunch delivered to the girls, the men will eat separately), ceremony at 4:30pm followed by 1-hour cocktail hour (I think 1 hour is too long, but my coordinator and family think we need the hour), and then a 3-course plated dinner (including cake and maybe a few speeches). We only have the space until 9:30pm but we're paying a $3,000 venue fee so I feel like we need to utilize it. For this reason I assumed we'd do a first dance, parent dances, and a few group dances if anyone is interested, while a slideshow plays on the big tv in the room and cookies & coffee/tea is served. However, my fiance and I are both really nervous about the dances. Neither of us can really dance and it's the one thing causing us (mostly him) insane amounts of anxiety. Would it be ok to just eliminate these dances?
One alternative I'm considering is doing a slideshow of photos of my dad and I, and then my fiance and his mom, then my fiance and I, like a 'first slideshow'. It'll take pressure off of us and I think everyone will enjoy seeing the pictures (17 of 20 guests are family). I also like this idea because some of my fiance's family doesn't speak English so seeing pictures is better than hearing a song in a foreign language.
Another option is to ask my fiance's dad who is a musician to play a love song for us while we do our first dance, and skip parent dances (and then do the slideshow).
I feel guilty not using the space til 9:30pm because 1) we paid the venue fee, and 2) people might feel like they traveled so far for a short event.
Just in desperate need of some opinions! My wedding is coming up so soon and I'm so nervous.
