u/rannoia

My (32F) fiancee (38M) and I got engaged in April 2025 and jumped into wedding planning right way. We decided to have a destination wedding; for context, I live in the Middle East (I’m from the region but not the country we live in) and my fiancé is from a completely different region and has only lived here for a few years but has lived in a few different countries and so has friends and family spread all over, this meant that a lot of people would have to travel for our wedding anyway. We picked a location that’s not expensive for visitors/tourists and that offers a lot for them to do throughout the week, and that is easy to obtain a visa to. Another reason is that weddings where live can be a little uninspiring unless you have a massive budget, and a normal wedding would have cost us 3 times what we’re paying.

I’ll start by saying that we anticipated some people would not be able to make it, but we sent out Save The Dates a year in advance, and the official invite not long after. We anticipated between 120-150 guests but invited more because we knew some people would not be able to make it. Our wedding was initially meant to be in May of this year, and we had a little over 100 who RSVP’d yes, but a few people dropped out a few weeks prior.

However, with the war happening earlier this year, things got too uncertain and we had to postpone to September. That meant that we had to resend invites and restart the RSVP process all over again. We knew that meant some people wouldn’t be able to make it anymore, while some people who initially couldn’t now could, but I was expecting things to look a bit better at this stage. We’re currently at 63 RSVPs (including 3 children lol) and are waiting for around 10 or so people to confirm, but that’s pretty much it. Everyone else has declined, or wasn’t able to change their bookings the first time around and so took the vacation anyway.

I’m trying to stay positive about it but can’t help but feel sad and worrying that the wedding won’t be enjoyable for our guests who do make it. I’m also worried that people will drop out again before the wedding.

The pros/cons I’ve had in my head are:

Pros:
- It’s made me appreciate the people who are making the effort a lot more
- I know we can spend time with all our guests and not feel guilty about not giving them attention - I’ve been to weddings where I’ve barely said hi to the bride and groom
- I can reallocate some of our budget/spend onto other things that I wanted but had to omit
- We won’t have people there who don’t care about us that much and only come because “why not” and who will leave right after dinner.

Cons:

- I’m a little embarrassed honestly. Arab weddings typically have at least 200 people on the smaller or more moderate end; I definitely didn’t want that, but I thought I’d made a lot of friends over the years and now I feel like a loser. Apart from my immediate family, none of my family members will be coming.
- A lot of people don’t know each other so I’m worried it won’t be enjoyable for them. We have a full itinerary planned out in the week leading up to the wedding so people will have a chance to meet, but I don’t know how that will go. I’m not sure if I should bother arranging for an afterparty because I’m worried most will want to leave early.
- There were people who I care about and was fully expecting to be there who won’t be. I completely understand some people genuinely have valid reasons like parents with kids, or who are not doing great financially, but I have friends who don’t have kids and who go on vacation multiple times a year who aren’t making it and who didn’t get back to me until I chased about RSVPs.
- We hired a venue that accommodates up to 300 people; while we can definitely dress it to appear smaller (we were going to do that anyway), I still worry that it will look empty

If you’ve read this far, thank you so much and I appreciate you. I’m just seeking some reassurance that things will turn out okay in the end :’)