Smaller wedding with around 30-40 guests

I think an intimate wedding sounds great. You’re able to spend more time with the people you really love and care about. You can also put that money towards whatever is important to you whether that’s better good or alcohol.

I had 40 guests at my wedding. I splurged on them by paying for their accommodations for the weekend, had a welcome dinner, farewell brunch, 2 bands for the reception, photo booth, fire pit with chairs and blankets they could take home, personalized ornaments with each guest's name, late night snack of smores and grilled cheese sandwiches, and a candy bar.

That sounds amazing!!! What was your budget if you don’t mind?

I was in a smaller wedding last year, but it still had 75 people. I thought it was nice, and felt like we got more of a chance to talk to everyone. She didn't do anything different than the 100-300 guest count weddings I've been to though.

View Quoted Comment I’m sure your guests had the time of their lives.

View Quoted Comment Thanks! It was so fun and can't believe it's been a year this month!

Oh yeah, I attended a small wedding (30 guests) last year and fell in love. So we are having an intimate destination wedding with 22 guests for US$4,000. It'll be at a restaurant on a pier over the Caribbean sea.

In order to make it more special, I'm going to sing my way to the aisle with a live cellist, pianist and guitarist. I can only imagine the sea, the sunset and my husband's eyes looking at me.

This is our venue:

View Quoted Comment That sounds amazing!!! What was your budget if you don’t mind?

View Quoted Comment That sounds incredible!!!

View Quoted Comment We spent a little over $50,000 for everything, not including honeymoon. We delayed the honeymoon to October. We went to Maui for a week.

View Quoted Comment Nice!!! I really LOVE what you did for your guests - they must have been so grateful!

We ended up with about 45 guests, plus us (we'd wanted to stay around or under 50) I really enjoyed it. I don't really like being the center of attention and we were able to talk to all our guests at the reception. We had a cocktail style reception and my MIL threw a welcome dinner that the majority of guests attended. It was just a great time of mingling and laughing with each other. Plus, we were able to splurge on live music, which we couldn't have done if we'd had more people.

View Quoted Comment Thank you! His parents were the type that never talked about the wedding when we were planning but now talk about it all the time because they loved it so much!

Hi Allie! Your intimate wedding is going to be absolutely lovely. You received some great insight here in this thread!

Is it a destination wedding? or Are a lot of your guests traveling from out of town to come? Anything addition to make it "extra special" like you said is completely up to you. Keeping your guest list (and their travel/situations) in-mind, an idea I have seen is doing a brunch the following day?

We had 40 guests invited but will have 25 ultimately attend due to finances. We are doing a destination brunch wedding at a hotel in Orlando and then a "family moon" cruise for the next 4 days together. We are doing a welcome dinner the night before. I don't think we are doing anything different or special but it has been nice to just text/call everyone that is invited since it is so small.

Yes! We are planning for immediate family only, so less than 25 guests. I don't think we will have a wedding party. It'll be a destination wedding with a short ceremony, photos, then a catered dinner with drinks! We can't really afford much else. Plus, we are private introverted people lol and would like to keep it small.

View Quoted Comment We are also doing a family moon cruise! Our kids will be 1½ and 3½.

View Quoted Comment Aw that's awesome. Yay for family moons. Our daughters are 9 years old. We'll have two sets of grandparents to take them off our hands for a bit

We had only a dozen guests at ours. Honestly, it was special because only the people closest to us (many of them ones we can't see often due to distance) were there. The lunch after the ceremony was supposed to go on for two hours--the restaurant ended up almost having to shove us out the door after almost three.

I wanted around 30-40. SO wants around 70-8

our venue holds 250 with dancing but we felt we needed space to realize our overall vision

i think our cool elements will be

roses (reception) and lilies (ceremony) made from book pages of Tolkien’s Middle Earth legendarium as we are having a Lord of the Rings theme

also each table will be the same color scheme (white table cloth and chair cover with navy chair sashes and runners), and have matching custom tea light holders (globe design with navy tealight and elvish phrase etched across top), and some of the stemless origami rose flowers made from pages of books from Tolkien’s Middle Earth legendarium on each table, but the rest of the decor will reflect the place in Middle Earth that the table represents. My best friend is drawing a version of the map from the books in poster size that will show our version of Middle Earth mapped out for guests to use as floor layout for finding tables; which is reasoning for wanting space. we’re going to gather everyone and hand out mini uv flashlights and go around venue to find hidden moon runes in Thorins map, make the light of earendil glow, and expose “hidden messages” on a couple of signs. I’m really trying to find one of the stings that light up too from like 2007 that’s not 500+ because we want that too but that one isn’t guaranteed yet

i think we want something photo of characture related too perhaps but there’s no clear direction there yet

i think 30 would be better but 50 isn’t a ton... I do think 80 is too many to enjoy ourselves really though