small wedding help.

asalas89

hello, I am in the process of planning my wedding. I keep going back and forth to either do a big wedding or a small intimate wedding. if I do I small intimate wedding I am clueless where I would have the reception at. I want something in the phoenix/Glendale area. any ideas or suggestions would really be helpful. I want this day to be as special and beautiful as possible. thank you!

climbingsingle

This is an international board. Try posting on your local board. Good luck!

KatWAG

What about having it at your favorite restaurant?

fwtx5815

You may be able to find some suggestions on your local board as far as venues.

As for choosing big or small: it really just depends on what your "vision" is (I hate that word but idk how else to describe it).
It will be driven by your budget, and how many people are considered VIPs. There are ways to do a big wedding cheaply, and a small wedding lavishly, and vice versa.

wrigleyville

We were sort of torn between a small wedding and a large wedding. Once we started working on our budget and thought about having all of my family there (which is like herding cats), the idea of a small wedding looked more and more appealing.

We ended up inviting 43 people and had 100% attendance. Since we didn't invite very many people, we were able to "splurge" a bit on the venue, food, and alcohol. We still ended up with additional money, which we put toward our honeymoon.

We're both pretty introverted, though, so a small wedding worked for us. If you love dancing and partying with a ton of people, then a larger wedding might be more your speed. You can do a large wedding on a small budget; you just have to get creative and be willing to serve chicken instead of steak, that sort of thing.

Try posting this on your local board as well. Just put "XP" in the title so they know it's a cross-post. The local boards can be found here: http://forums.theknot.com/categories/local-wedding-boards

wrigleyville

Also, I really loved looking through this site when I was planning our wedding. I was confident in our decision, but it helped seal the deal. The more I looked through the real wedding examples, the more I knew I'd made the right decision.

http://www.intimateweddings.com/blog/real-weddings/

jenna8984

@wrigleyville I had 23 guests and I totally want to submit mine to that website now lol

 

wrigleyville

jenna8984 said:

@wrigleyville I had 23 guests and I totally want to submit mine to that website now lol

 

You should! I love looking through the stories.

JennyColada

I had 5 guests!

We had our reception at a restaurant. Very easy planning!

tammym1001

We had 35 guests. We booked our wedding at a regular wedding venue, but they had a smaller venue that they normally book for business meetings and things like that. It was way nicer than their ballroom and they were excited to be able to book a wedding in it. They ended up bringing 3 couples in to see the room set up for a wedding on our wedding day so they could try to get even more business out of it. Ask at traditional venues and see if they have more options if you don't want to do it in a restaurant.

CMGragain

I love small weddings!  They are the most traditional.

ohannabelle

I love small weddings as well. I would rather host 20 people really well, than deal with a herd of 200. The more people you have, the less time you're able to spend with each guest. A small wedding can be beautiful and elegant, and so much easier to manage. 

primafaba15

If you can swing a small wedding, I'd go for that -- it will be SO much easier to plan and afford. We both have large families - ~80 relatives + SOs + just a handful of friends is the minimum we could get away with without ridiculous drama, and even that feels huge and just so, so expensive. If you don't like the restaurant idea, it's definitely worth checking with traditional venues. Our country club has a couple of function rooms, including a smaller space that wouldn't swallow an intimate wedding completely. You might have more luck going for off-season and avoiding Saturday nights - we had trouble finding traditional venues in our area that would even accommodate a reception as 'small' as ours on a Saturday, but other times would have been much easier.