I don't know if any of you remember my previous post on how my BF and I couldn't agree on what kind of wedding to have. He wanted to elope, whereas I wanted a wedding with family. The big issue was that he has an extremely large family, and by doing a traditional wedding we were looking at least a 200 person guest list and lots of money. He selected a venue at a midpoint between our current home and his hometown, and after running the numbers at the venue (quite reasonably priced), and all the other factors, we were still looking at a minimum $18-$20k for the wedding. He nearly choked on that number. I wasn't thrilled with it either.
So after much talking, we've decided to have a destination wedding in Florida. We are thinking a beach wedding with a reception in a restaurant or other small venue. This is the best of both worlds, since it allows us to celebrate with our closest friends and family, and we will not be inviting all of that extended family he doesn't really care to see, but felt obligated to invite if we were having an intown wedding. His parents will explain that we are having a small wedding out of town since it's not our first, and hopefully they shouldn't be offended by that. It's still a reasonable driving distance from our families, so having them make it shouldn't be a real issue.
Thanks everyone for all your good advice. I'm happy that we've reached a good compromise, and this is the exact wedding that I want to have.
