Hi, folks!
I'm getting married in September, in a mountainside micro-wedding with just our parents and siblings present - basically all but an elopement. Our extended families keep not-so-subtly hinting that they just can't waaaaait for us to throw a lavish reception back home. The problem: we do not want, and do not intend to host, a reception.
I don't want to be pressured into hosting an expensive party that I know I will not enjoy. I have always viewed the reception as something one does for the guests - it's not much about the bride & groom at all. Since we are doing a super-small destination micro-wedding, we won't have scores of guests to receive. My fiancé has quite a lot of family out-of-state, so they would have to fly in to our home state for a separate party, weeks after the wedding has already occurred. This feels... silly. And the long & short of it, really, is that we do not want one.
It's very easy to say that we aren't planning to host a reception because we can't account for whether or not it would be safe to do so due to the pandemic - but now I'm getting a lot of comments like "Oh, well you can just do it the following summer!"
I feel backed into a corner and I don't know how to politely say "I absolutely, 100% do not want to do this. I love you very much but I will lose my actual mind if I am forced into hosting a reception so that other people can say they ate a bunch of cake, didn't dance, and talked to my husband & myself for four whole minutes shortly following our wedding day."
How do I fend off this unwanted train of thought, without offending anybody? It's coming from all sides. Help!