Go really big or really small? big family but small budget!

I wouldn't say that we ended up doing a less intimate wedding but, my FH and I are in the same boat as you when it comes to families. Our guest list was around 130 when we started planning and that was not even including all of our immediate family and friends. We also had budget issues, so we pushed our date back and our venue actually dropped their minimum to 90 for us. I will say that I am having a very tough time figuring out who to remove and who to leave or add. It sucks but in the end we have to stick to our budget. In the end the decision is ultimately up to the two of you. When you envision your wedding what do you envision. I can't tell you how many times people advised me to just rent out a hall to stick to our budget, and while that is nice, it wasn't what we envisioned for our day. I knew it was possible to stick to budget and still get what we wanted. When you envision your wedding do you see intimate or do you see big? At the same time you have to be realistic, big is possible if you have the budget but then, as my mom always said, "you have to live the next day after the wedding. Your rent and bills are not going to pause just because you got married." Is pushing your date back an option, if not do intimate, you can always do a large vow renewal when you have more money and invite as many people as you want.

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Yeah, we're pretty much stuck between (I say "stuck" but I love all these options) doing a venue in our area in the winter or very late fall for lower pricing, OR an evening cocktail hour "married under the stars" shindig, which would bring the food cost down quite a bit, OR doing a very intimate all-inclusive, which has the additional draw of them doing everything so that we can focus on our careers and baby, AND we don't have to worry about others getting overly-involved or pushy with things that "have to be a certain way."

I could see us having either. My ultimate would be a huge destination wedding with everyone there but I know there is no way that will happen with what we can allot to getting married. The sticky situation is that I kind of want to do both, so either way I might end up regretting!

I guess it's not even that I want "a big wedding." I just want to include all our loved ones in some way or another, which necessitates a big wedding. You know?

......what if we invited aunts/uncles/cousins to watch the ceremony remotely and then, idk, sent them nice wedding announcement boxes with little favors or something? Would something like that be super-rude? IDK; we just really want to include our loved ones but it's so insanely expensive. If we do the destination, which seems perfect in most other ways, we won't even be able to invite everyone we wanted to for the wedding party. :-/

We have around 100 people at our wedding. I think we would have enjoyed a destination wedding more though. Our wedding was great and fun, but we would have rather had less people and maybe something more personal. Could you have a destination wedding, then maybe a few months down the road try hosting a reception for the rest of your family?

Our guest list is 100 and we're honeymooning at Disney World, so best of both! Budget is why we chose September. If you have your wedding during the week, you can get really good deals. Chances are it would shorten your guest list too.

What I did was have a small wedding—just true immediate family, no aunts, uncles, cousins—and close friends. 22 guests including us—don’t forget yourselves in the count. I started assuming I’d do bigger but not only was the money adding up quickly but it also stressed me out. Now, I will say that the costs started adding up even after my package, so be aware of things that aren’t included or that you might want. Travel costs, other socializing outside of the wedding, needing to get everything there and back and having to pay for professionals. Often, too, in my experience there are fewer cheap or alternative options for things like floral and photography than there might be in another area.

All that said, I loved my wedding and wouldn’t change a thing!!!

In my situation we don’t have a big family, with both our aunts, uncles, first cousins and immediate families it’s about 90 guests. Then once you add a couple friends and traveling vendors it’s about 100.
Im not entirely sure you’re budget, but it’s going to be a lot of DIY and creative thinking for that large if you “go big”.
what you could do is do the elopement in Disney (I’m partial cause I LOVE Disney)
and a year or two hold a reception and renew your vows so you can still celebrate with family.

I am in the same boat, my wedding will be next year so i have lots of time to figure this out! just my cousins alone adds up to 82 people... So far my plan is a kinda elopement with just the wedding party. then a large reception to follow. The ceremony/ elopement will be on a lesser known public beach, and the reception will be a bonfire on the beach about 20 min drive away. Serving drinks hot-dogs and s'mores. its less traditional. more romantic i think. Cons being its a public beach, but that cuts down on cost... I didn't see where you are located but you would have to research your area. Mine (Oregon) allows bonfires and ceremony's on the beach. so far (not including my honeymoon) my hard budget is <$5,000. and i am currently calculating at $4,000. it can also depend on your family, mine is more relaxed and potlucks every other wedding so i guess i kinda have it easier then some.

My partner has a massive family and even though I would like to keep the wedding to under 100, it's very unlikely. Especially as we live in a very small town that many many of his family live in, so we can't really have the wedding just down the road from his family members and not invite them. He's also very close with his whole extended family.

We are on a very tight budget so we are cutting out as many unnecessary costs as we can. We are borrowing the tent for an outdoor wedding and hiring the chairs and tables from the town hall instead of an event vendor. We are having a tiny cake and doing more of a buffet dinner with a spit roast pig that the guys will cook the day before. Decorations will be a minimum and we are doing most things ourselves, including building the dance floor. We wanted to be able to share our day with everyone so we are having something simpler to accommodate this because spending the day with family is important to us.

We have also considered having our ceremony away and then just hosting a big bbq after we are married, which is another great option and has been done by members of his family previously. They supplied a keg of beer and hot dogs and hamburgers and everyone had a great time just celebrating more casually. In the end, its your wedding, do what will make they two of you happiest, it just may mean cutting down on costs wherever you can.

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We were in the same boat. Do it locally and the guest list is huge and FMIL wouldn't be able to make it. We opted pretty quickly for the DW in Vegas which is an hour from FMIL. It's been wonderful not having to hunt down every vendor individually. Our place is all inclusive with ceremony, reception, food, cake. flowers, photograph, videography and dj. We'll have around 30 people there. Everyone coming is paying their own air fare and hotels. I've had 1 cousin that assumed that when I was debating renting a big house to do everything that she'd get to stay there for free. She suddenly couldn't afford to come when it was hotels vs the big house. It is what it is though since we do have a small budget and are trying to get into a bigger house so hopefully we can have a kid together someday. I have a son but he would like another(my son is from my previous marriage).

My cousin did a very small DW with just her, FH and parents/siblings and then had a big back yard style party for the reception back home for everyone to celebrate so she got the best of both worlds.

View Quoted Comment If I were a guest, I’d think that would be super rude.

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I agree, I would be pretty offended to be part of one event but not the other.

DH has a rather large family, they are not close to just the first cousins, but also the second cousins and their children. Guest count only on his side would be about 150. My family lives overseas and I would have about 10 people. If marrying locally we would have to invite most friends and he would need to invite a few people he knows through his job (he is a business owner that works closely with other companies). Anyway - the budget would never reach that amount of people so we did a DW.

We invited about 50 people. 31 adults and 6 children attended. It was what we could afford and it was beautiful. I had people coming from overseas just for the wedding and it was super sweet.

Our day was very very emotional because we really had only the people we are closest to which was so special.

I have no regrets neither does DH - we paid everything off and have no wedding debt, we did not use anyone else's money (not that is wrong to do so, our families just did not offer or could no offer), and we hosted very well the ones we were able to invite.

Your only way to reduce the number is to cut in layers: cut the friends first (besides wedding party), then cut the cousins, cut the aunt/uncles. It is a hard call when the wedding is local, but it is the right way to do.

One more thing I want to add - don't go thinking that a DW cost less. The cost being less is because you have less guests, all other costs are just the same. Our wedding came out to about 16k which is way more than I initially thought it would cost (because like a lot of people I though DW meant saving $&dollar. We could have had a very simple wedding locally, in a part of one of the halls we have membership to, Italian or BBQ catered, minimal decor for about the same price - so you have to do a lot of research and see what is important to you then make the decision about location and guest list.

Good luck~

Well I am still in the process of getting married next year in June. I have a really big family on my Dad’s side. He has 14 brothers and sisters. So after doing the math of uncles , aunts , cousins and so on I am easily at 300. Then if I add the rest of my immediate family, extended family on moms side and then who FH wants to invite, we are at 400. I have never wanted to have a big wedding. We are on a tight budget as well. My decision to have a smaller wedding was due to:
1. I do not honestly know or talk to everyone on my dads side or my moms extended family’s side. So I do not want to invite people out the fact that we are related.
2. I only want to invite close family and friends that I keep in touch with or talk to almost everyday. These people are also people that have been very supportive of me and FH.
3. I want to enjoy the experience. I am only getting married one time. I want to try to enjoy every moment of it. I want to be able to tell everyone thanks for coming and still get to eat my food and enjoy the moment.
4. It helps keep me on budget. The smaller amount of people you invite, the less you do have to pay. Now I can’t guarantee that on the venue because that’s a whole other thing but like food, beverage, decor, seating and so on.

Hope this helps.

We invited 220 people to our wedding. We thought the list would be closer to 150, but it grew as we started writing it. I'm assuming the RSVP count will be 150-180, but you never know. We are in Denver and started at a budget of 30k, then went up to 50k after we raised the guest count. A lot of our guests are out of town. Our biggest costs are venue & catering. Then liquor. Then photo, then floral, then video, then DJ, then day of coordinator, then officiant, then dessert. We aren't spending much on decor, our venue has a lot of natural beauty. I got 5-10 quotes from each style of vendor for what we were interested in, then put together a budget from those estimates.

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My question is "why can't you invite everyone you want for a DW?"

My FH and I had a similar situation. I have almost 100 people on my side just including family (Parents, siblings, aunts/uncles, cousins and grandparents). I didn't want a large wedding and it would have been impossible to figure out who to invite in the family without hurting peoples feelings. We decided to have a DW where we were able to still invite every single person we want to knowing that not everyone would be able to make it. As of now we have 34 people attending and we are still having a small wedding party. After my college graduation party and being felt like I was being pulled in every direction and not enjoying in, I specifically remember me thinking "is this going to be my wedding?". The wedding hasn't happened yet but I am 100% confident that I made the right decision.

We have played around with the idea of having a laid back party/bbq when we get back home for everyone who wasn't able to make it, but honestly the more I think about it the less interested I am in it.

We were in the same boat! But my FH extended family is HUGE and local, it’s his second wedding and my family is all over and small. We went with a destination wedding so that way we could invite everyone and only those who were willing to make the flight to South America would come. It’s turning out great, didn’t have to cut our invite list at all and will end up with a wedding of approx 70 guests!

I forgot to mention that the options for the Disney weddings that we would consider either allow for 4 or 18 guests. The unruly amount of family members is also a main reason we are considering "running away" in the first place. This is also why I wouldn't want to do a party or reception when we get home. To me, doing an all-inclusive at a destination would be so I wouldn't have to deal with all the rigmarole surrounding the logistics of a big party for all our family. I love them and yes, it would be great to have them there, but it doesn't make sense with the way our lives are at the moment, unfortunately.

We ran into this as well. My immediate family is large (I’m one of six children) and my FH extended family is large (lots of aunts and cousins). We are paying for the wedding ourselves and had to decide between having a big wedding that was less what we wanted or having a very small wedding and getting everything we wanted. We chose the latter. We will have about 25 guests and rented a B&B for the ceremony and reception with all the necessities included (cake, officiant, decorations). When we originally started planning we were going to have the big wedding and it just got so stressful. When I finally asked if we should just elope that was when we realized we needed to change directions. Having the limited space has helped keep the guest list down as well, we can only invite up to 35, and when anyone who isn’t invited asks we just kindly tell them that due to the space restrictions at the venue we couldn’t invite everyone we wish could be there.