Stressed

If you can't pay because of huge family there are some solutions (assuming that you and your fiancé are footing the bill):

1) Trim down your guest list. You don't have to invite the entire family, especially those you're not close with and those you haven't seen in 1+ year(s).2) If both you and fiancé want everyone at your wedding: save money on other areas, especially on unnecessary things: flowers,aisle and/or table runners, décor in general, favors, big & fancy centerpieces, ceremony programs, escord/place cards, fancy,expensive save the dates/invites, expensive food & drinks items like lobster, salmon,champagne, whiskey...3) If your parents want to invite peole who you don't know, barely know, who haven't seen in years or who are not important to you and aren't an active part of your life, you should not invite them unless they are contributing financially.4) You can change your date to increase your saving.

I completely understand the struggle with the big family. When we first started planning, we sat down and made out our guest list. My family alone (parents, siblings, aunts, uncles and cousins) was 120+ people. Once we added in FH’s family and our close friends, we were over 200. Once I started reaching out to preferred vendors, it became clear right away that hosting a 200+ person wedding was just not feasible unless we wanted to severely compromise on our vision for our wedding. After months of stress, I sat down with FH and we talked about what our ideal wedding would look like, and we discovered that we both really didn’t enjoy huge weddings, but felt pressured to have one because of the size of our families and not wanting to hurt feelings/offend anyone. We both preferred to have a small intimate affair where we would not be overwhelmed and spend our whole night trying to make sure we spoke to everyone. We finally realized that this event was about US and should reflect what we truly wanted as a couple. So we made the decision to cut our guest list to parents, siblings and closest friends, and have an amazing destination wedding of our dreams, and live stream the event for those not present. I cannot tell you the amount of relief we both felt when we finally made the decision. You and your fiancé should sit down and talk about what is most important to you both when it comes to the wedding. Is it important to you to have your entire huge family there? Or are you feeling pressured to do so out of guilt? If you both want to have the big wedding, then Frankie had some great suggestions on how to cut costs. Another thing that might help would be to identify your top three priorities (ie, Food, Bar, Photography, videography, entertainment, music, flowers, etc. etc.) and splurge on those three items, and find ways to either save or eliminate the less important items.

I’m from a very large family as well - 1 of 7 kids and tons of other relatives. Having a wedding and including them all can be quite stressful. For my wedding we are only inviting immediate family that we are close with and our closest friends. An idea could be that you only invite your close family (people you talk to and see on the regular) and then let your distant relatives join in via zoom or another online video source. There are so many ways to cut costs in weddings, but the biggest way is to see if you can trim your guest list. If not, cut in other ways that people really don’t care about or even remember (i.e. Save the dates, invitations, favors, decor, florals, etc).

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Thank you Frankie! This is very helpful! We are doing our best to do everything you have listed! Thank you thank you! Only hard part is to saying no to parents with their endless list of friends, but with the idea of asking them to contribute for the extra people that we do not know will work! Thank you!!

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OMG! CECE!! RIGHT! i love my big family and all, but our pocket wasn't ready for this big special day! You are definitely right about cutting the list shorter, and picking what our top 3 priorities! Thank you so much!!! this means a lot!

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Melanie you are a GENIUS!!! I love that idea for VIA ZOOM!! this is definitely something we will want to try our best to have up! Thank you so much!!! Truly appreciate you!!!

View Quoted Comment Oh girl!!! Technology is our friend!! I’ve learned to really appreciate it for when I’m working and how it can still help us be close to those we love. I hope you get it worked out and those who can’t make it can at least join in!!!

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CeCe: Absolutely positively sage advice!