Wedding

The Wedding Guest List: Figuring Out the Size of Your Wedding

June 8, 2020

Hey hey hey everyone, welcome back to my wedding series! In my first wedding-related post (click here), I shared all the bohemian wedding venues we looked into before booking “the one” – it was so fun to talk through them with you all. Which one do you think we chose? Since then, I’ve shared my wedding dress shopping experience (click here) and tips on how to find the best wedding photographer (click here) and in today’s post, I’m talking all about determining the size of your wedding and finding the right fit for you and your fiancĂ©… let’s get started!

Large? Small? Medium? How do I know what’s the right fit for us? Those are some of the questions that were swirling in my head soon after I got engaged. Something we did right off the bat that I think really helped us was consider the bones of our relationship and what feels right to who we are as a couple and we imagined actually being at our wedding. Who could we not imagine getting married without and what feel did we want for our special day? This really helped us put things into perspective and start building the guest list.

Something else to consider right away is budget. Obviously, the bigger the wedding, the bigger the budget needs to be – the guest count is the biggest determining factor of the budget. For every person invited, there are many costs that go along with them. Even small things, like the difference in printing save the dates and invitations for 30 people vs. 250 people really adds up. With that being said, you only get married once so if you truly cannot imagine getting married without 250 of your closest friends and family there, then 250 people it should be!

Something controversial in the wedding world that I would say should not be considered is who you think you “need” to invite. It’s so hard to sit down and think through all your family, friends, co-workers, etc. and decide if they should “make the cut” or not but at the end of the day, it’s your wedding and you should be surrounded by those who love and support you and that you feel completely yourself around. If the thought of having hundreds of eyeballs staring at you walking down the aisle doesn’t feel right, then maybe a wedding on the smaller side is for you.

Speaking of a wedding on the smaller side, I also wanted to mention eloping! For a long time, I thought we would elope… it seems so wonderful! Eloping can look very different depending on the couple you ask. It can mean going down to the courthouse or epically flying across the world to a remote location… and just about anything in between! A fun idea if you do decide to elope is have a get together a few weeks or months afterwards with all the people that would’ve been invited to a traditional wedding to celebrate your marriage with them that way. How cute!?

For us, our relationship has been pretty low-key so we will be having what’s called a micro-wedding – it fits us perfectly! If you don’t know what a micro-wedding is, basically it’s just a smaller, more intimate celebration. Once you start talking about the size, you’ll know what feels right to you. We’re so excited for our day! Next in the wedding series, I’ll be writing about finding and booking all of our wedding vendors such as catering… woohoo! Talk to you then!

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