Decreasing wedding list for March

I was in your situation. My wedding is in January, and my fiancé and I had originally planned a 250 person wedding with 7 bridesmaids (which includes my 2 sisters and his 1 sister) and 7 groomsmen. In August, we scaled back our wedding to 25 people - family only. As a result, most of our wedding party will not attend. Although our sisters will be there, they are not standing with us. We decided that it would just be us and the officiant standing during the ceremony. However, our wedding party has been so awesome during this entire ordeal and crazy situation, we’ve named them our virtual wedding party. They’ve been nothing but supportive and understanding and have still hosted our pre wedding events even though many of them won’t be in attendance at the wedding. We are live-streaming the ceremony and intend to recognize our virtual wedding party and toast our virtual guests immediately following the ceremony.


Since we downsized the wedding, we decided we were not going to cheat ourselves from a real wedding experience. We are still getting married at a resort (what I wanted), having a beautiful ceremony where my dad will walk me down the aisle and a formal dinner with some traditional reception elements (grand entrance, first dance, cake cutting). We’ll play the shoe game. While this was not my plan and I would have never considered a smaller wedding outside of the current circumstances, I’m actually excited about our “Plan B” wedding. Don’t worry and don’t stress — you and your fiancé can find a way to decrease the guest list and, through compromise, still have the wedding you both want.

You could keep your wedding party and have them there virtually or have them there physically and have other family/loved ones attend virtually.

If you do have dinner, mabye get caetering or order takeout for everyone while you eat outside. I, personally, wouldn't have an indoor reception or 25 guests eat indoors during this time because I know many of my loved ones would be uncomfortable

View Quoted Comment Thank you so much for this really puts it in perspective and we also have a wedding party that is very understanding especially during this time.

View Quoted Comment Yeah I agree. I can always rent out heated lamps or not sure what they’re called

Have you thought about just getting married on your original date with family and having a bigger wedding later in the year? That way you both can get what you want.


My husband and I did that. We got married on our original anniversary date with about 35 of our closest family and friends. Our big wedding is scheduled for March 2021 where we will have our bridal party. We're in Maryland and our venue is allowing 80guests right now so we're good with that number as a limit. It's like we get the best of both worlds ... & two weddings ❤️

View Quoted Comment Hi! Yes we still want to get married in our date. So I think I just need to see and ask him about this idea with just family. Maryland is still at a high capacity compared to Virginia ! See if I can have that that would be great !! We just don’t want to do double the work either. Especially when we are in the process of buying a house and all.

View Quoted Comment Maryland has limited capacity percentages but not necessarily direct numbers. I believe we're at 25% which is completely different than 25 people. Our venue holds around 300 I believe, I'm hoping it stays at this percentage.


& I definitely get it, my husband and I are in the process of searching for a home as well. It's a lot planning a wedding and doing that at the same time

View Quoted Comment How did you go about on telling your wedding party bridesmaids and groomsmen that they wouldn’t be able to be in your wedding ?

View Quoted Comment We called each of them and let them know, and then we sent an email. We called because we wanted to personally let each of them know and then we sent a group email since that had been our main form of communication throughout the planning process. We let them know that we had made the difficult decision to downsize our wedding to a small family event given the current circumstances. (The only people who will be at our wedding are our parents, grandparents, siblings (and their spouses), nephews, aunts, uncles, and godparents) and that while we would have loved to invite everyone, we couldn’t do that and risk everyone’s health and safety. And we told our sisters who are in the wedding party and who will be in attendance that given the small size of the “Plan B” wedding (25 people), only my fiancé and I will stand with the officiant. Everyone was very understanding and supportive, and honestly, some of them anticipated this change might be coming.

View Quoted Comment Okay that really helps a lot. Thank you so much for that.

You’re very welcome. Try not to worry - people are more understanding than you think, especially given the circumstances. Once you make the downsizing decision and let people know, it will feel like a weight has been lifted from your shoulders because you know you are making the right decision for your wedding. You got this!

View Quoted Comment Yeah definitely believe the weight will be lifted off ! Most definitely need. I sure do.