big wedding, small wedding - has anyone changed their mind about what they want?

flyjawn

i really believed that i wanted a small, casual destination wedding with no tradtional wedding stuff involved.

but i just saw pictures of a good friends wedding in sri lanka and she went ALL OUT.  her husband made his entrance on an elephant, she was introduced with traditional dancers... there were fireworks.

and all her family was there making toasts and celebrating together.  

now i'm thinking that maybe i want a bigger, more elaborate wedding.  i don't know, i'm confused.

has anyone else been down this road?

aerinpegadrak

http://offbeatbride.com/2009/03/fetishizing

flyjawn

love it.  that's a great article.

i'm not planning my wedding yet so no real decisions have been made.  and hers are the only photos i've had this reaction to.

but the point is well taken.

i called her and told her that if my name wasn't written in the sky over a beach at MY wedding now, i was going to be disappointed.  we both had a good laugh over it...

Tula214

I pretty much did I total 180. Originally I wanted a big, fall wedding. 5 or 6 BM and GM. I had my colors, theme, everything picked out... then my sister joked with me about getting married in Hawaii.

Now I'm having a small wedding in Mexico.

aerinpegadrak

I definitely fell victim a bit to the thing Ariel talks about.  But there's a certain point where you really need to stop comparing your wedding to others and be happy with what you're doing.  We ended up making a lot of changes (including drastically cutting our guest list), and while it was rough and I think there will always be a little part of me that wonders what it would have been like if we could afford our original plans, ultimately I was still very happy with the end result.

Soon2BeMrsTing

Although DH and I never changed our plan, we did see a significant number of potential guests RSVP 'no'- as in, we invited 235 and saw 125 actually make it out to celebrate with us. We were saddened by the drop, although we understood the reasons (adoptions, major surgeries, births, distance and other weddings happening at the same time when many are still feeling the pinch from the economy tanking.)  We thoroughly enjoyed planning for a larger wedding, and even last night we were talking about how much fun we had with the guests who were there.  In truth, even with 125 present we were just barely able to exchange a a few words with each guest, although we made the sincerest of efforts to do so.

Neither of us have a single regret about the wedding, and we're glad we did it up as big as circumstances allowed.

kimp67

When we originally started to talk about our wedding we figured we would just elope.  Then the more we thought about it the more we realized that we wanted our friends & family there to celebrate with us.

skippylouwho

DD said one of the best thing they did, in the long run, was picking a venue with somewhat limited space.  It seated 180 comfortably and they had right at 180 attend.  She was glad they hadn't chosen a bigger venue as their guest list could easily have grown to 400 if they'd had the space. 180 was a very nice number of people and everyone seemed to enjoy themselves.

DanielleZZ

I wanted a small destination wedding with only parents, siblings, and grandparents but I lost this battle against my fiance and my parents and we are now inviting 225 to our hometown wedding.  Although I was a little disappointed at first it will be fun to share with everyone and of course more presents.

graceb15

We had a venue booked for this August and we were planning to invite 200 people. Just last week we totally changed our minds and are having a small winter wedding and inviting about 30 people. I'm so much happier and less stressed out about it all. Its nice too because we are saving so much money.Going to the new venue next Saturday to pick a date, either in February or March.