My fiancee and I are in the very beginning phases of planning, and we're trying to decide whether or not we want to have a wedding party. We're both leaning towards no... it's just more stuff to coordinate, plus we're only inviting about 50 people, most of whom are family. So all the friends being invited are very close, and we feel like we don't want anyone to feel "left out" if they're not in the wedding.
However, both of us feel like we're going to want help getting ready on the wedding day, so my question is, what's the etiquette surrounding having friends who help you get ready the day of, but aren't part of the ceremony?
And if we DO choose to have a wedding party, we're not sure where to seat them at the reception. Again, since we're having such a small guest list, there are only going to be about 8 tables, so we don't know if we'd do a head table with the whole wedding party + their dates/spouses, or just have a sweetheart table and have them with everyone else.
Neither of us has been to many weddings, and the ones we went to were all hetero couples so we don't know what the heck we're doing here. (ETA: we're both women, if that wasn't clear.)
