big vs small?

laurygates

ok ladies, ive reached a new dilemma. Do I spend the money and have a big wedding? or do i have a small wedding with family and close friends and leave my savings account for a down payment on a house? Ill be almost 27 when i get married and we want to start having kids at 30, so ill need a house but cant buy a house with no downpayment.....arrrrr life choices! Just want to hear your thoughts, and if anyone had a small wedding and either regretted it/loved it or vice versa with a large wedding id love to hear your stories. hope to get some feedback. thanks

mattjenniwedding

Our wedding isn't for another 5 1/2 months but we have invited over 200 people.. If we hadn't already sent out our STD's..  I would totally downsize. The closer it gets to the wedding.. the more I wish we had done a smaller, more intimate wedding.If cost is your concern.. take into consideration that if you have extra people there.. it isn't just the food and alcohol you pay for.. you have to have extra chairs and tables.. which means extra table centerpieces.. linens.. silverware.. dinner settings.. favors.. programs.. sparklers (or whatever you use for the exit).. everything!HTH!!!

ejayne

I would definitely go for the smaller wedding!

AggieDaner

I'm having a medium to large size wedding and rarely a day goes by that I don't wish I could cut the guest list in half. Planning a smaller wedding is easier, you have more venues available to you, you can provide more for your guests....I just generally think it's the best option.

selinacv

 FI & I knew that we wanted to buy a house and get married.  So we started saving and pushed the wedding date out a year and a 1/2 after we got engaged.  We saved for our down payment and then went from there on saving for the wedding.  We are having a large (to us) wedding of about 150 ppl bc we have so much family.  I think the decision for small or large wedding needs to be decided by the both of you. Does your FI want a large wedding? Oh, and we decided not to take a honeymoon so that we could save more money for the house/wedding fun.  HTH!

jlmowris

It's a very personal choice but we decided to have a small wedding because we'd rather actually spend real time with our firends and family than to try to make the rounds and thank everyone for coming. To me it's worth cutting out some people to make sure I have time to dance with my brothers. Most of our guests are out of towners so I don't want them to fly all this way to see us but not really be with us. I don't know if that makes sense to anyone else or not but smaller weddings not only save money, they also allow for quality time with the guests who really matter.

kelseymw

My philosophy was to invite the people that matter, the people that I really wanted to share the day with, the people that I wanted to be there to witness such a big occasion in my life. For some that list may be larger than others. I believe it is quite possible to have the wedding of your dreams and not break the bank. This site has been really helpful for me with making my budget count. We're keeping our wedding as small as possible, but we have veryyy large families that we are close with. Damn my grandparents for having a dozen children, and further damn those aunts and uncles for having multiple children! LOL. Basically, just inviting family and our very best friends our guest list is over 200. I'm hoping that actual attendance will be more like 130-150 but who knows, considering that we are all close. Hopefully that makes sense somewhat.

sozay23

ours is 120 people and we are very happy with that number. It truly is a personal decision that only you and your FI can make.

erin&andy

It really depends on what you want.  When we were planning I just wanted to scream half the time because the guest list kept getting longer and longer and I never wanted that many people at my wedding.  Luckily not a lot of people showed because we were inviting from overseas and out of the state, but like the other girls said - you save a ton of money by not inviting people and you get to actually see your guests when it's a smaller wedding.

bryansbridebri

Small wedding and down payment!

khaverland

I'm only one month away from my wedding and it's inching towards 150 now - I wish I'd gone smaller as well!

may2005

It's a personal decision, but for budgetary reasons, we opted for a small wedding, a decision that I didn't regret especially when looking at costs.Unfortunately, anything remotely connected to wedding usually means an extra expense over the cost of putting on a regular party !!