...to talk of an intimate wedding.
Our Save-the-dates went into the mail today! It was a very exciting feeling to see them go - it made me feel like this is really happening. What started off as a 14-month engagement has now evaporated into just 9 months, and 60 of our closest family and friends will soon become official guests of our wedding as cute little black and white envelopes arrive in their mailboxes.
But I must be honest. The excitement of my trip to the mailbox today is also accompanied with a bit of guilt, as I know it will also become official very soon to some people that they are not on our guest list. This is what comes with planning an intimate wedding.
We did purposely want a small wedding. I wrote of this once before. We want our wedding to be filled the closest people in our lives, and we want to be able to celebrate with each and every one of them - not just hug them and say thankyouandgoodbye. But I would be lying if I said that money did not eventually become a factor in the total list count, because it did, and unfortunately we had to be very selective with the final numbers. This is what comes with a wedding budget that is less than 1/4 of the cost of the average American wedding.
We tried to keep as many people as we could by choosing a cocktail-party reception over a sit-down dinner, choosing a location that would allow us to bring our own beverages and alcohol, and throwing out the traditional rehearsal dinner. But in the end, cuts still had to be made.
So I would like to write to those who will not be recieving a save-the-date:
Please don't hate us. Please don't think that we do not value you as a friend or coworker, because we do. We have so many people that are part of our lives everyday, and you are one of them, and we apologize if anyone's feelings are hurt. We are paying for most of this wedding ourselves, and had to limit our guest list to only family and a few select friends. In the tough economy we are in, everyone is making sacrifices, and we hope you understand this as we are all facing challenging cutbacks in our lives. We hope that you will still follow our journey to our wedding day and celebrate with us individually after we return a married couple. :)
Anyone have any words of wisdom on dealing with the backlash of an intimiate wedding?
Yay! I am so happy that you are so on top of everything! I almost forgot that you have to work to put on a wedding!!
ReplyDeleteDon't worry about peoples feelings getting hurt... just let them know you love them and they can come if they want to pay the bill! hehe ;-)
We are dealing with this now we are only having 75 people at our wedding from an extremely large family! A lot of people are being cut out of this BIG day and we had to just apologize politely as you did and hope that all is well in the end. Good luck and I will certainly be following - it's such an exciting time and I wish nothing but the best for You, Pete and Ryan :).
ReplyDelete~Erin