Hello!
So, I'm having a slight issue planning my wedding dated for 2022.
Little backstory...
I have been engaged for 4 years (I'm a very busy lady!) and now that my life is right where I need it to be I'm ready to start planning my wedding. I had slowly looked into wedding planning throughout the years and had noticed that I could never seem to make anybody happy who was helping me to plan everything out. I wanted to have a destination wedding - Groom's family didn't want that. Wanted to do a semi-destination wedding (3 hours away), my older family members didn't want to do that, yet, they were ok with the other destination idea...
I'm at the point where I don't care about anyone's opinions anymore and my motto is, "If you don't like it, don't go." We'd rather not have them if they're not simply enjoying the day with us.
So, Groom and I have decided we were going to really solidify that motto and focus on what makes us happy and celebrate with the people who want to support us while keeping in mind our family's concerns. We are having a destination reception (DR). As I have been told and have seen, this is a very unusual concept and I was met with a lot of criticism. Naturally, having a DR is a little more work, but I think it's so much more fun!
The Plan...
Our idea is to hold the ceremony at home and have a very intimate "cocktail reception" afterwards as a thank you to our guests. That "reception" is only for a brief time and we will serve hors d'oeuvres. There will be music, perhaps some food stations and a small cake and dessert from our family friend's bakery. I'm not pulling the big bucks on this, it will cost less than $10k. Then two days later we will meet our guests at Walt Disney World where the real reception will be held. It's all planned out and all we have to do now is to sign the papers. And, believe it or not, the price is unbeatable!
So, here's my problem. My mom is very supportive of our plans but does not understand the process we're going about it. I'm hoping I can get some input from other sources so I can be pointed in the right mindset with positivity rather than negativity. Before we sign anything we need a head count for the DR and the reason why is that if we say 100 people are going but only 50 people RSVP then we are still required to pay for half the people who aren't showing up, so, we would pay for 75 people and it doesn't go towards any other costs - we pay for ghosts, basically. I refuse to pay for people who aren't going, that's why I want to have an exact number of people or, at least, a small ballpark.
I want to either send a simple "You're invited - are you interested" type of card for the DR (not really sure of the wording, can't send a Save the Date because we haven't officially booked the date yet) or, simply, reaching out to my family on social media and asking if they could see themselves wanting to go. This is where my mother disagrees. She thinks asking them ahead of the Save The Date is untraditional and too casual. But as I had said, I refuse to pay for people who aren't going and would much rather have that ball park. Not to mention the head count is what guarantees us a certain venue. We are teetering with a number that is very close to one of our preferred venue's maximum and our other preference's minimum - we can't book either venue until we know for sure how many people are going.
Does anybody agree with the way I'm going about this? Or does anyone have any creative suggestions?
Thank you!
