Elope or Big Wedding?

Small wedding with 10 guests locally and then go to Rome? Do you care if your dad/parents are there? If not then do what you want and don’t have your FI talk you in to something you don’t want.

Why not have a 10-person wedding locally, then go to Rome on your honeymoon? Your choices are not eloping or having a 130-person wedding--you can choose something in between.

Elope! I wish I would have.

Oh that's a big difference. I would suggest really think about what you want. In 5, 10, 15, 20 years what are you going to be ok with? You can absolutly have a cheaper wedding and have less guests. If you don't talk to the family members and are not close you don't have to invite them. We're not inviting any of mine because I see them maybe once every 7 years, and yes we all live in the same area.

You do you and what you and FH want and are comfortable with. But it does not have to be one or the other.

Talk to your family; especially your father and find out their thoughts. We we're in the same situation. We always said we'd elope and have some fancy honeymoon. Our families also seemed to agree with that until we we're finally engaged. Our thoughts began to change when thinking out the pros and cons of eloping or having a wedding. I'm also an only child and it was very important to my dad that he walk me down the isle. So, we ultimately decided to have a small wedding. Nothing big and fancy. Our guest list stops at 60. And our budget surely isn't $25,000. But it'll be nice to celebrate turning the 10 yrs of dating into marriage with the one's who have been with us through those years. And I've actually enjoyed the planning so far. I'm glad we chose the wedding route. Just take some time to decide what is important to you guys and what fits best with your relationship.

You can do a smaller wedding with large families. We were at 55 and DH has a HUGE family. We didn’t invite anyone from his family that we didn’t see in the last year or two and anyone I could readily identify at family events. You don’t have to invite everyone. We told his parents that we wanted to keep our Wedding small and they were fine with our decision. Cut your list and have the best of broth worlds- Wedding and honeymoon.

We were considering eloping somewhere abroad, but our family would be so hurt if they weren't able to be there with us, so we decided to have a small-ish wedding of 50ppl (all family) in the US instead. That was as small as we could make it without starting a war. We just picked a city we both love. It ended up working out in our favor, though, because my uncle ended up offering to pay for the honeymoon.