r/weddingplanning

So we finalized the guest count, and are a month away. I thought we had at least 50 guest… nope. We only have 37 adults (I’m not counting the kids but we do have a few kids coming!)

Everything is paid for already but I really regret doing the big wedding instead of just eloping and a dinner. I’m so worried my wedding won’t be as fun as I always imagined. I knew 50 would be risky but we didn’t even meet 50?

We only spent $500 on our dj, so like if the dance floor is a bust it’s not a huge loss but I worry it won’t be fun, like the beginning of a middle school dance where people are afraid to get on the dance floor and nobody else is so nobody wants to start? Or like only a few people at a time so it’s not a fun party.

My bridal party and friends ensures me well have a great time and it’ll be fun loved night. And I know the only thing that matters is if myself and my FH have a good time. I just always envisioned and been to weddings with 100+ people and with the amount of money we spent, I’m just getting insecure with what we have.

IM NOT DISSING on micro weddings. I just regret going about it the way we did because I feel like we don’t have enough people for the “full wedding” experience and I worry everything will look so silly being such a low guest count.

And I know this is probably just stress and anxiety as we lead to the big day, my fiancé complains to me every day about our finances and how we went way over budget for both our wedding and honeymoon and he’s constantly coming to me about money stress which of course makes me regret my decision because if it was up to him we would’ve just went to the courthouse.

I’m just feeling so blah and needed to rant.

Just need to rant. Everything is on our website with an FAQ section. It's like every guest wants us to help them with something. All adults over the age of 25 btw. Some highlights:

One guest is complaining how far the drive is (2 hours), sorry my bad, let me change the venue just for you.
Edit: This particular guest spent a whole dinner in person complaining about how inconvenient it is.

Another guest doesn't have a car and is asking me to ask ALL the other guests if someone can carpool. Not all my guests have cars including some who are flying in, no one else is asking me to find them a ride and she follows up daily if I found her a ride! Girl, go rent a car or ask around yourself.
Edit: I’m not asking 150 guests if anyone is available to carpool.

Another one is asking me what 'formal dress code' means. Sir, it's in the FAQ section and you can look it up. No, don't send us photos of your suits, we have a million things to manage I don't want to help you pick your outfit.
Edit: This is not a tech issue, guest is 26 y.o. Again inspo is in our FAQ

I love my guests but when I have a million things on my mind I cannot answer every trivial question when it’s on the website or can be searched up.

Photographer is locked for the wedding and as usual budget is tight. Video is the thing I keep cutting and then adding again, I'm confused actually. For anyone already married: did you book one, and looking back would you make same call?

Hi everyone,

I wanted to know if I’m overreacting with my wedding cake fiasco. I got married one year ago and paid for a vanilla strawberries and Bavarian cream cake with floral decor.

On my wedding day, the cake did not have any berries. I was disappointed after and reached out to let them know and requested a refund for the berries. The vendor has you build the cake, so every detail like berries, floral, layers, comes additionally, so I figured reaching out to request a refund for just the berries was reasonable since we never receive them.

The vendor was nice and issued us a refund and also offered to redo the top layer of the cake for our one year, just call and remind them.

I was really pleased with this answer, and I reached out several times and waited about a week in between each outreach before trying again. Finally heard back from about two months of trying, and they said they would be happy to redo the topper cake as a promise.

I go to pick up the wedding toper cake and they tell me it’s exactly how it should’ve been on our wedding day. when I get home and open the box, it’s not decorated at all.

I reached out to the venue and thanked them for redoing the cake, and told them I was still disappointed because it wasn’t decorated. I told them we never got to truly experience the cake we ordered and paid for, that I wasn’t requesting any other compensation or redos, and wanted to let them know how I felt and to use my experience to prevent mistakes moving forward.

I said I have regrets now going with them because we will never have the complete cake we ordered with both berries and decorated.

They responded and said they’re “utterly disappointed “ with my response that despite their best efforts I’m still unhappy.
No accountability for the second mistake.

Am i being unreasonable for wanting the cake with berries and decor how it was supposed to be done? I was completely kind and professional with all outreaches.

I’m tempted to write them bad reviews which I’ve never done to a business before, and wanted to see if I’m being reasonable.

Thank you for the feedback.

god, if i couldn’t be more stressed!
i’m having a “destination” wedding in california so all our family and friends will be with us at the end of july! however i find out im pregnant just last week! i don’t have family in the state where i live but my soon to be husband does.

i just don’t know if i should announce it in person with both of our families present, or if i do it privately? i won’t get a lot of one on one time with my side of the family before or after the wedding sadly, but i also don’t necessarily want to announce it virtually, but idk! im spiraling! am i announcing it too early or would it be disrespectful not to tell them before the wedding? i’m not sure…. a little insight or guidance is appreciated!

Basically, there are three others groomsmen besides me. The other three and the groom himself all live in the same city (5 hours from me).

They want to do a bachelor party that’s 2-2.5 hours north of them (in other words 7.5 hours from me).

This would involve me having to buy two hotel nights (Friday night and Saturday night) and it would be 7.5 hours worth of traveling both to there & back all for just one event that takes place on a Saturday night from 5-7 pm).

I am extremely close with the groom, but I also have expressed concerns due to money and time constraints of the traveling. I told him that logistically where they are having the bachelor party from 5 pm - 7 pm at is extremely difficult for me when I’m 7.5 hours from that party location, whereas they are all only 2-2.5 hours from the party location & so it might make most sense for me to not attend & so that they can all do the most optimal planning for the trip bc it’s 4 vs 1.

But I did say please do not let me hold you guys up. I want you guys to do what works best for the group and I asked him to please not revolve it around me/let me be the reason you guys don’t choose that event.

What do we think?

I looked through this sub and can't really find a post that fits this situation, so here I am. I'm honestly at a loss for what to do here.

A friend of mine has been with her partner (now fiancé) for about a decade, and he's horrible. Without getting into TOO much detail, he is an alcoholic, treats her like absolute garbage, is very controlling, and has been mooching off of her to varying degrees the entire time they've been together. He drags her down with him into this codependency spiral that she cannot dig herself out of. She's almost left him a few times over the years, and each time my other friends and I have jumped into action mode to help her get out, only to have her ultimately stay with him. She knows we don't like him, not just from these near-breakup times, but also because when she used to bring him around, he would get drunk and be a surly assh*le. She would get embarrassed and apologize for him, and eventually she stopped bringing him around. There's this sort-of tacit understanding that we don't like him, he in turn doesn't like us, she knows this and understands why we don't like him, and we just... don't really talk about it anymore.

My fiancé and I don't want him at our wedding, and I'm sure she knows this, but I'm not sure what to do because this is her partner and they're technically engaged (although she has implied that it's more "engaged to be engaged," claiming that he needs to prove that he can change before they start wedding planning -- this has been the situation for about three years). I go back and forth between only inviting her and not putting his name on the invite, or inviting them both as a formality and keeping my fingers crossed that this continued unspoken agreement holds and she just doesn't bring him. If I go with the first option, I can't decide whether I need to talk to her about it or not. As for the second option, I don't particularly want to take that gamble (and my fiancé definitely doesn't).

And then there's this third option I guess, where we invite them both, he comes, I don't actually interact with him outside of niceties when necessary, and then if he gets hammered and/or rude, we can just have our on-site coordinator kick him out. Like is it worth resurfacing all of this awkwardness around her relationship just to put my foot down or whatever? But then at the same time, he'll have to be at the table with our other friends, none of whom want to talk to him, so it affects their night as well.

Anyone been in a situation like this? What did you do? What should I do?

TL;DR - Everyone agrees my friend's fiancé is toxic, and honestly, my friend knows it too — how should we approach the decision of whether to invite him to our wedding?

Hey everyone. So me and my longtime partner got engaged last year (November). My
Father in law was very unwell at the time, with a potentially scary prognosis. We decided therefore that we wanted to get married within a year of being engaged, so that everyone could be there. After talking about it with everyone, we settled on a date at the end of November, with a contingency plan.

Things seemed to be looking up for a while. Health was good. So we focused more and more on the November date. But we kept thinking about the possibility that things may not go as hoped. It’s an exhausting thing, trying to hold space for both eventualities, but I’m glad we did- we just got told that FIL only has a few months left. So we have decided to bring the wedding forward by two months to increase the chances of him being there and being able to participate. We’re basically starting from square one. But it’s worth it if my FIL can be there, as we love him so so dearly. My own dad (estranged and no-contact) died last year and my FIL has been a huge father figure in my life for the 9 years me and my FH have been together. My family (small), all live in different countries and getting my mom to commit to anything is very hard work.

I almost feel like I want to just hide from the world and be married without any kind of party. My FH is still slightly holding on the possibility of still keeping our November date as a party with the other 55 people that would have attended had we got married then (invites already sent out, all vendors booked). But i physically cannot deal with the idea of having to cancel closer to the date when we’ve already had to pivot in such awful circumstances. I just want to plan one thing. I think the wise thing would be to simply cancel that November date, or move it to the following year sometime….but then again grief is odd and I know how much it colours our lives in the months/year after.

I have hated this whole process, because of how complicated the family things have been both on my side with my traumatic upbringing and the tragedy on my FH’s side. I have not felt like I’ve been able to dream, or to get excited because at almost every turn something has tempered my feelings. I’m excited to be married to my FH, I just wish we could skip all of this. I am terrified that I will look back on my wedding day and just feel sad. My FH feels guilty (as if his father having terminal cancer is his fault?!) because my life has not been easy at all up to this point and he says he wishes at least that I could have had a straightforward wedding but I’ve told him that that’s not how it works. If I think too much about all the stuff I’ve had to be strong through and add this to the list of reasons to pity myself I am afraid I will fall into a deep hole and never come out, so better not to think about it that way. I have to stay focused on what actually matters.

Thank you so much for reading. Any advice you all have on how to deal with this all and the whole “tiny wedding, big party ages later” thing would be greatly appreciated.

Hello!!
I am freshly engaged with my partner of 3 years! Back story, I have a child from a previous relationship& we actually had a baby earlier this year (slightly planned, slightly surprised).
I wanted a proper engagement & ceremony as my daughter being my flower girl & my dad walking me down the aisle means a lot to me.

We have talked a lot about what a wedding would look like for us so we are fairly ready to plan & get married next September (budget/time willing!). We obviously are already untraditional lol, but we want some traditional aspects!

We found a few venues and touring them, and one stands out more than the other! It has great pricing packages for an inclusive package (priced by guest count!)
Not that it should matter, but I feel the pressure to NOT pay for inclusive…but is it so bad to just want to pay people to handle our day?? Within reason?
We have 50 guests and we want to enjoy our day & not worry about what goes where, timing of, setting up/taking down decor, let alone PREPPING it all! Like I said, we have 2 kids & both work full time!

We have a photographer & officiant already lined up as they are our close friends. I’m not looking to hire hair & makeup because my sister & I both cover that end, we have no official bridal party. We are skipping Bach parties/bridal showers! I would like to make our invites/table numbers/seating chart/welcome signs just because we love graphic design & thrifting (for frames & we want to thrift vases to have as our center pieces)

Did anyone else take this route that has positive feedback!? Anything you wish you did do differently? Encouragement!? Thanks!

Hi! I’m two weeks out from my wedding and feeling excitement, nervousness, and everything in between. A part of me is also looking forward to moving on with my life and not having to think about the wedding.

For those with a similar wedding timeline, how are you all feeling?

Hi all! I am getting married in 3 months and am getting into the little details and decor. As background I am a Type B bride who has had the hardest time making decisions cause ultimately this day is about bringing our families together to celebrate our love and the small details aren’t something I have swooned or dreamed over.

My question is I keep going back and forth over f**** it, money is just a concept and this day is going to be the most important day of my life so let’s get all the signage, cute decor, party favors, etc. - or is all that stuff really just extra that won’t add or take away from the day?

I am typically very money conscious and trying to relax and not be too frugal cause I want this day to be beautiful. Any advice over must haves or things you could have done without would be greatly appreciated! Thank you!

I am having trouble with my timeline. We're getting married in December and will have ~100 guests. 10 people in the wedding party (5 on each side). Our venue contract is for 12 hours of time, and we could pay $200/hour to extend. We're doing 2 hairstylists for the bridal party (6 people including me) and we're all doing our own makeup. How much time to budget for getting ready? I'm trying to decide if I want to cough up an extra $600 for getting ready at the venue that has beautiful getting ready suites or ask my mom if we could use her house (30 minute drive from venue). What are your thoughts? Any timeline edits or issues?

8:00 AM	Getting ready (where?)
9:00 AM	Getting ready (where?)
10:00 AM	Getting ready (where?)
11:00 AM	Venue opens, wedding party arrives, get into dress
12:00 PM	lunch / photos
1:00 PM	photos
2:00 PM	photos
3:00 PM	photos
4:00 PM	Ceremony
5:00 PM	Cocktail Hour
6:00 PM	Dinner
7:00 PM	Toasts and cake
8:00 PM	dancing
9:00 PM	dancing
10:00 PM	Event concludes, guests depart, bar closes.
11:00 PM	Must be out by 11pm

Hi! My parents are making a very significant financial contribution to my wedding and I do feel the need to get them something but I am stumped.

I wanted to do something sentimental but not corny since my parents are well-off people yet do not overly enjoy fancy things. Recommendations like a gift card to a restaurant or a bottle of wine imo don't feel special.

Something I was considering for my mom as her mother (my grandma) died last year was either

1. ⁠A necklace locket that has a photo of her mom in it
2. ⁠A painted portrait of me in my wedding dress, my mom in her day of dress and my grandma

I don't know if these are too sad or too emotional though. A third option I was considering was a portrait of just me and my mom in our wedding dresses and leaving her mom out of it as I don't want to make her super sad..

For my dad I'm even more lost because he isn't into overly sentimental stuff but also we buy for his hobbies every birthday and Christmas...

Any ideas?

I just got back from my cousin’s wedding over the weekend and I’m still kinda surprised at how smoothly the guest logistics went. These two aren't the most mmm attentive or careful people, I love them but they're pretty bad with organizing stuff. So good thing they got help + took things more seriously, it was about time!

But usually, weddings with remote venues are a nightmare for guests because rideshare apps love to hit you with insane $120 surge prices the second the reception wraps up, or you end up stuck waiting an hour in the dark for an Uber that keeps cancelling. Instead of that they did a proper centralized shuttle coach that ran back and forth between the main hotel block and the venue all night.

Greatest addition ever. Nobody had to argue about who was going to be the DD, and nobody was stressed about getting this uncle or that grandma who got stuck miles away. Basically,you have to traet your wedding (at least the transport part) like a professional operation. If everyone arrives at the ceremony at the exact same time, that's like 99% of the wedding problems solved.

It also went back at 3 different times, so people could chill up until 8, 10, and then 12 no problems. So yes - just screw independence and self-driving lol. Keep your guests together as much as possible, especially older or non-local family and friends. Way more efficient than letting them scramble individually.

How far out from the wedding is too late to pick a makeup artist? I am struggling to find one and I have plenty of time, but I wonder how late is too late?

Update: Thanks, all! I’m not going to say or do anything (no invite for the ex, no heads up text, etc.). I just didn’t know if there was some weird etiquette rule or wedding faux pas (weddings are so fucking weird to begin with with all of the rules and etiquette). Why are weddings so complicated and filled with unnecessary drama? 🤡

Original: I’m the bride. Someone in our wedding party went through a breakup several months ago. We sent out save the dates before the breakup, but we haven’t sent invitations yet. I’m acquaintances with their ex, but it’ll be really awkward if the ex attends the wedding because the person in the wedding party is bringing a date. How should I handle this since invitations haven’t gone out yet and the ex and I still talk occasionally? The ex and I haven’t discussed anything about that wedding since the breakup.

It was not an amicable breakup, and we’re trying to stay neutral since we don’t know the full story from either side. But in the case of the wedding… The wedding party member wins and we don’t want the day to be awkward. 😬

Thank you!