My fiance and I are planning our wedding for August of 2018 with 50 people. Neither of us have any experience with weddings and we only have 10k to spend.
We live in northern Florida and none of our family or friends live here. Both of our sets of parents live in South Florida. The rest of our family is spread all over. My paternal grandparents are in Tennessee. His are in new York. My maternal grandparents live in the Caribbean. My uncle lives in Malta. My stepdads family lives in Haiti as does his aunt. Our friends are also spread all over. We chose to have the wedding in South Florida because it will be easier for our families to fly into and it's close to both of our parents, so it is a destination wedding for us but still pretty familiar.
My main concern is that the wedding is on a thursday. My family is ok with it because we are used to making long trips when events happen because we are so spread out. We are doing it the first week of August so that the kids are out of school. The issue is with my fiances side of the family. He doesn't have a very close relationship with anyone outside of his nuclear family. He is inviting them because he has fond memories growing up with them and he doesn't want to hurt anybody. He says most of them don't work regular 9-5 jobs so it shouldn't be an issue since they're not guaranteed weekends off anyway and he doesn't care if a lot of people decline.
My second concern is that we are only able to afford a beer, wine, and soft drink bar. It will be for the entire 4 hours and nobody will need to open their wallets. But is that enough when people are traveling so far?
As for the rest of it, I think we did ok. The ceremony and reception are at the same venue. There will be plenty of seating. There are tons of hotels nearby in different price ranges. We will have a buffet with baked ziti, parmesan crusted chicken, bread, salad, mashed potatoes, green beans, zucchini and squash. There will also be wedding cake and a black cake, which is what my family traditionally serves at weddings.
We got the cheapest photographer we could find. I got my dress on sale at davids bridal. We are not doing professional hair/makeup. We are not doing real florals or any expensive decorations or upgrades.
Is there anything we need to fix so that we are hosting our guests properly?