Cold feet--about the wedding celebration

It's perfectly fine (and understandable!) to be happy with the wedding day you had, and not want a do over any more. But it's also understandable to be stuck on the "sunk costs" of what you have already spent on the upcoming celebration and not wanting to cancel it.

Only you and your husband can really know what you want and don't want. But from a purely monetary point of view, calculate how much have you spent (you don't have to answer here) vs. how much do you still have to spend to carry out your plans for the celebration? You may come to realize that it's worth losing deposits if you get to keep all of the rest of the money you haven't spent yet on your 2nd celebration. Also, maybe you can sell some stuff you already bought?

If the finances don't help you decide easily, then you both will just have to have some deep conversations about what you both have now, what you are happy with, what you might get out of going forward with your 2nd celebration, etc. Maybe some pro/con lists will help? I would definitely focus on your wants and needs as a couple and set aside what others think (or what you are guessing they might think). Good luck!

Can you cancel without losing a ton of money? Is it worth it to not have to spend even more (on flights, clothes, etc etc). Totally ok that you're feeling the way you are and i'm glad your wedding day was really special.

If you truly don't want your Fall celebration, have you considered "selling" your event to someone else?

If you had the wedding day you loved, I’d try to cancel the other celebration. You’re still bound to spend more even if you have to eat a couple deposits. I had a similar experience to you and I figure - why reopen the doors for something to go wrong?! No, I loved my wedding day.

I felt the exact same way, but was going to lose 15k if we didn’t do the celebration, so we are going through with it. Hindsight, if I could rewind time, I would have just stuck with our real wedding day last June. It’s normal to feel the way you do, and a lot of us feel the same way!

So, I just pulled the plug on our rescheduled reception. Ours wasn't necessarily because the wedding we had was the "dream" wedding (though the pictures we got from the adventure shoot afterward made it all worth it), but more so because it feels like the wrong decision to spend thousands of dollars on a party celebrating the fact that we'll have been married for over a year. Yes, we lost out on a couple thousand dollars, but it's better than spending 10k+ for something I'm not fully invested in anymore. Luckily, my vendors were very flexible and the ones that didn't offer any refunds are allowing me to transition their services to other events (my sister's baby shower that I'm hosting and our church's VBS), so it's not all lost. Honestly, if you're not feeling like having the celebration, then cancel. Use the money for an extended vacation, or house fund, or whatever else you may want and look back on your wedding day with all the happy feels that you already look back on it with.

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Is this possible?

It's perfectly fine, really

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This is awesome, thank you for sharing.

View Quoted Comment I have seen several brokerage websites such as:. Cancelledweddings.net and I believe Wedding Wire even has a section. You can also check with your venue/vendors to see if you can transfer the services to another couple and advertise on social media. Fall is a very popular season for weddings and I don't think you'd have a problem.

We're in a somewhat similar situation (small, perfect miniwedding due to COVID; large, unnecessary-feeling reception scheduled for 2021) but I never considered canceling the bigger party, even though it doesn't feel that important to me.
If you're really sure that most people you invite won't come, or that they won't be excited about celebrating with you, you should probably try to figure out how to cancel this. But, it's unlikely that most of your guest list is comprised of people who are not invested in celebrating this milestone with you, even if the celebration has been delayed.
The reason I never considered canceling the large reception is that a lot of people who we didn't invite to our 2020 wedding have made it clear that being able to celebrate with us is really important to them. Also, some people who didn't complain about being excluded last year have said they're looking forward to seeing us and other guests for the first time in a long time. If you're in the same position (even if it's not true for your entire guest list), I think the hassle and expense of going through with the event will be worth it because those people will really appreciate being there with you and make you feel good about bringing them together.