r/weddingplanning

Hi everyone! Sorry in advance for the long story.

We are having a backyard wedding on family property in a month. We live on the same property, but the ceremony and reception will take place at my fiancé’s grandparents yard/deck. There were already some hesitations when we first decided to do this, but it’s a gorgeous riverfront property, and I love the idea of having it be somewhere special (land has been in the family for almost 100 years, fiancés late father built our house, etc.). My fiancé bought the property from them a couple years ago so that they didn’t have to struggle to pay the mortgage on a fixed income.

However, my fiancé’s aunt is extremely unstable. I’ve heard endless stories about drug use, alcohol use, mental illness, and very erratic behavior. When I first moved in last year, she was staying at his grandparents house on the property. Some drama went down and then she was kicked out, bounced around places, was in jail, then was living on someone’s porch in a tent. She was not invited to our engagement party last September, and we told his grandparents that she wouldn’t be invited to our wedding.

A couple months ago she was in a “house fire” while living on said porch in said tent. She was hospitalized for a week with burns. Originally his grandpa said that she would not be living with them after she was released, but of course, his grandma overruled him, and she came back to stay with them. A couple weeks later we hear that there’s a rumor that potentially she started the fire on purpose in an attempt to kill herself and the people she was staying with… we live in a small town and word gets around quick. Another family member tells the cops what they’ve heard, but beyond that there hasn’t been any investigation that we’re aware of. His grandma is very much in denial about this rumor and gets very upset if any anything bad is mentioned about his aunt.

Here’s the big dilemma… She’s still living there, and we’re only 30 days away from the wedding. We kept thinking she’d leave on her own like she usually does but nope. I’ve been telling my fiancé that he needs to talk with his grandparents about what the plan is but He’s been a little worried that it could spiral and cause a lot of drama between us and them, and worst case his grandma says we can’t have the wedding there anymore… and an even worse case is that his aunt does something crazy to sabotage the day.

My fiancé’s mom has been fully on our side in all of this and sick of the aunts behavior. She is going to talk to them first later today so that the heat isn’t on us. I told my fiancé that if it doesn’t go well, we will be over there to have the conversation ourselves.

On top of all the other wedding stress, this is just starting to get to me and I hate it Like I said, I’m a little worried about her being vindictive about not being invited AND being kicked out. Will she break windows in the cars that are parked on the street? Show up drunk and high?Light OUR house on fire? I don’t think a restraining order is necessary at this point obviously, but I’ve already come up with a plan that if she shows up on the day of the wedding the police will be called.

My fiancé and I have talked about it a lot, endlessly, and he’s completely supportive of whatever I wanna do and knows that he’s gonna have to deal with this. For me it’s a little more simple because they’re my in-laws , but it’s his family and a little more complex. He also feels embarrassed that this is even an issue.

Family dynamics are sooooo fun 🤗

If you’ve experienced this, how have you dealt with it?

Before you ask - nobody has offered a single dollar to help us with the wedding. Not his family, not my family. We’ve committed $15k CAD of our own money, which in our circumstances, seems reasonable.

My husband and I (both just turned 25 years old) are already legally married, and now planning our official small wedding celebration next year with friends & family.

We moved from Canada to a VHCOL place in California 6 months ago due to my husband’s job, and have had to 1) furnish our apartment, 2) replace our car because a distracted driver hit&totaled it, 3) live off of one income because my work authorization is still pending.

We are flying back to Canada for the wedding so that our guests don’t have to come to Cali, and foregoing a lot of wedding stuff (no bach parties, no dance floor, no DJ, no hair/makeup, no decor, etc.) to cut costs.

We’re keeping the guest list small (50 people), doing a Sunday brunch wedding, and using a restaurant buyout as the venue. The location will be somewhat central and within 2h of everyone’s houses (they’re all spread out and live 2-4h from each other).

My friends and family have been critical of every single venue I’ve suggested. These are some of the comments so far (all for different venues):

- everyone’s complaining it’s not close enough for them (our guests are spread out). If I please one, the other’s upset. One of my friends literally said “I wouldn’t want to take the train home after drinking at your wedding, it would be ideal if my parents could come pick me up”. It’s a 30min train that they take home from late concerts all the time, and my wedding will end at 4pm?

- there’s no accommodations on site (would prefer a restaurant attached to a hotel, instead having to book a nearby hotel if they wanted to stay over - also they don’t know for sure if they’d stay or drive home, but they “want the option”)

- there’s nowhere good to take pictures and they don’t want to have to go to a different location before the ceremony

- some people would need to stand during the ceremony

- if we were on a patio there would be wasps

- if the ceremony is outdoors it could be hot/humid

- if the ceremony is indoors, they don’t like the ceremony spaces

- the interior decor “doesn’t suit us” (I actually liked the interior decor of this place even though it’s not perfect)

By some miracle, my parents & MIL agree on a restaurant venue (let’s say Venue A) they love that’s $17k - they like that it has a hotel and parking, the seating, the photo opportunities, etc. I told them it’s not within our budget and they just keep saying “I’m still team Venue A” when I try to suggest other more realistic options.

We quite simply can’t afford to spent $20k+ on a Sunday brunch wedding, and we’re not going to give in. My rant is moreso that I wish they cared more about our comfort & excitement than their convenience on our wedding day. We’re already flying back and doing it in their area to make it easier for them, but it’s not enough! God forbid they have to find street parking or a separate hotel (or you know… just drive home because it’ll be less than 2h from their houses anyway).

Rant over. If you made it this far, please tell me how to get them excited about the realistic options instead.

Our family is huge. Most of those family members are married/in serious relationships.

Most of our closest friends are married/in serious relationships.

Family is chipping in next to nothing. Can’t afford to get a larger venue to host everyone, so current chosen venue is going to be CRAMPED. Can barely afford the headcount as it is.

I want to back out now before it’s too late, get my venue deposit back, and do something else. But truthfully I don’t even know how we could scale back the guest list even if we totally shifted gears without pissing people off, or having to omit friends and only have family. Either option would cut down the guest list from like 140 to 115 - which doesn’t even sound substantial.

I hate this!!!!!!

I've been wedding dress shopping twice now and both times the stylist asked about my fiance, the proposal, first date, ect. I get that it's customer service and a sales tactic but I find it weird and fake.I just want to tell them to cut the act because I know they don't care.

I feel like it's also coupled with guilt and pressure to buy a dress from them that day. Does this bother anyone else?

Edit: Hey! I'm sorry for offending everyone with making assumptions that people don't care. Moving forward I'll try to be less negative and pessimistic about social interactions. I get that it's just small talk! As a shy/ introverted person a lot of these social interactions make me overwhelmed because I feel I have to match the high energy. I get that I'm the weird one! Please everyone forgive me

Trying to make this quick because the wedding is tomorrow. I am the bride’s cousin, she’s not having a bridal party, so I am her helper, we’re getting ready together, etc.

The photographer (amongst a myriad of other small but strange communication issues) let the bride know she “will have to” bring her husband (and also 3 kids because they have no sitter) because of a pregnancy-related issue. Not trying to be insensitive, but it’s crazy to drop this on us 2 days before ESPECIALLY because kids are included and the bride already told multiple people no, they could not bring their kids, it’s a child-free wedding.

I would be sending an angry message but understand this woman is going to have our photos hostage. So WWYD? Husband and kids are obviously going to need to entertain themselves outside of the venue and won’t be eating. But how exactly would you specify this?

Side note: a couple of months ago, this photographer was reamed on two of our local Reddit pages for not showing up to a wedding citing “marathon traffic” which demonstrably did not exist.

okay, so we get married in t-4 months. we get a call from the venue today that they’re being sold to wedgewood. and nothing is technically ‘changed’ about our wedding, except for the fact that the final payment will go to wedgewood and we will be having new contacts with 3 new coordinators moving forward instead of the people at the venue that we got to know and enjoyed. just a few sad/strange things

a) in the overall costs/contract that we signed, there is a decently large coordinator fee that is now going to strangers

b) the whole time we were told the venue would be undergoing renovations in october & they were not sure when it would reopen. that is one reason we decided to have our wedding in september. is it crazy to feel like their ‘renovations’ was dishonest all along?

c) we have to speak to the original venue team, we’ve only received the voicemail telling us. i’m just not completely sure what to say. what would you say/do?

i told my fiance that we fell in love with the venue & that’s not changing (apparently). but this all feels strange & screwball?

thoughts, comments, concerns, wishes please 💕

ps we’re going to look at our contract in depth just to cover all bases

I know this may sound very silly or dumb but I want to give my little cousin who was supposed to be a ring bearer a gift since he'll be missing my wedding. I sent him a ring security thing and my aunt said she'll have a talk will him about missing my wedding due to her and my mom's inability to bury the hatchet as well as conflicting plans. She had a talk with me that it was nothing personal against me so, there's that.

Is there a little gift or package I could put together for my little cousin to recieve when they get back from their trip that would be a nice present? Like maybe a coloring book, a personalized baseball hat (our theme is baseball) and he likes the same team future hubby does, and maybe put 'Ring Security' and his name or something onnthe side of the hat? And maybe a letter from me and future hubby?

I have no idea what I'm doing here.

This is a bit different than the typical "will I regret not having a videographer" question.

We weren't originally going to have a videographer because we want to be budget conscious. However, we were in a situation where it was really looking like my fiancé's parents were not going to be able to make the wedding (international visa issues) so we booked one so that we could live-stream, have high quality videos of the ceremony, speeches, and dances, and just have something to capture the feel of the day for them a bit more than photos would.

We got amazing news this week that their visas are approved and can attend! Yay! However, we spent quite a bit of money on lawyers to help get them here, and now we have to pay for long flights, some accommodations, etc (they are coming from a very LCOL country to a very HCOL one).

Now comes my dilemma: do I cancel the videographer or keep it?

I've already paid a $1200 non-refundable deposit, but the remaining balance is still $3800. I haven't asked them yet, but I assume cutting out the live-streaming might cut down the final cost a bit.

Financially, it makes sense to cancel, especially since I never even planned for videography. I had actually decided yesterday to cancel, but for some reason when I went to write the email to them today I couldn't send it. I just got this gut feeling that I’d regret it.

I should note; we are not in any debt over this wedding and have the money to cover everything, but it's still a significant amount especially on top of the other expenses we now have. My fiancé is more on the side of cancelling, but if I really wanted to keep it he wouldn't mind, so the final decision is kind of up to me.

Our guests are all over the place and I have no idea where to have our wedding. We’ve collected addresses and they span 14 countries. I’m Indian and my fiancé is white. We are from the US, but families live on opposite coasts.

We have:
~80 guests from the US
~80 guests from Europe
~40 guests from India
~5 guests from Brazil
~5 guests from Australia
~10 guests from East Asia

We understand that many people will not be able to make our wedding because it will require travel for pretty much everyone. We are paying for all accommodations, meals, and local travel. The stragglers from Brazil, Australia, and east Asia must be considered because they’re immediate family. About half of the US guests and half of the Europe guests are friends.

We thought Europe would be generally centralized but my awful future SIL (not going to get too into that now) heard us planning for this and booked a venue two months after our wedding date in France, despite 85% of their guests being from the US. And then tried to get her in-laws to force us to move a year because she didn’t want to share her wedding year 🙄. But as a result Europe is generally off limits as to not start drama, not force guests to go to the same place twice in a couple months, and also because I’m kind of soured on it and I know I’d never hear the end of it.

There is some hesitation about traveling to the US amongst our families, and would be impossible for my extended family in India to attend.

Top contenders rn are somewhere in the US or India. The US would be more expensive for us, and cost our guests more as we would not be able to afford accommodations or meals outside of events. Also would cause a lot of my family not to be able to attend. India lets us do a lot more, but is obviously tough to travel from the west coast. Time is not a limiting factor as 70% of our guests are retired, and our friends have all (literally 100% of them 😅) already said they’d take the week off if our wedding was a destination. But India just “feels” further and more difficult to do.

Any insights? I know this sub hates destination weddings but I don’t expect people to come if they can’t make it. We’re trying to cover as many costs as we can afford to. And our immediate families literally span 5 continents so anywhere we picked would be a “destination” for our guests. Help 😭

Hi all, so I splurged and got a planner because I was having chest tightness and crying everyday when looking for venues. But now I feel like every time she sends us vendors they’re all over budget. And she keeps saying “well what you want costs this much”. My wonderful fiance has offered to be a “groomzilla” by asking to at least be shown in budget options. I don’t mind spending more if it’s really necessary but I’m not feeling the necessity. I feel like this has easily doubled the cost of our wedding and I just see the number climbing. For dare I say a fairly normal wedding. Someone please tell me if I need to just trust my planner or if I need to have a conversation and how to do that. Thank you all!

Edit: hi everyone. I want to thank you for all your feedback. I think the consensus is, have a chat with my planner but likely is just things are expensive. I’m going to stop responding but will leave this post up for an hour or so and then take it down. Thank you again.

We’re doing dinner family style and I saw a pin the other day where they had just one menu per table and I love the idea of saving a little money on something I know people would just look at once.

We are thinking about having my niece be the flower girl for our wedding. She’s only one and will have been walking for only about a month by the time of our wedding. Think it will end up not working very well?

Note: I don’t expect a one year old to walk completely by herself. Also the wedding is in a month

Unsure if the DIY tag is appropriate, but I felt it fit best. We're having a small completely DIY ceremony and reception with a guest list of 50 people or less. We're going mostly nontraditional. Not really a party vibe, we skipped the DJ and instead are doing some activities like games to play and such. Our budget was 8k. We have gone a bit over but we're still under 10k. The wedding is June 14th.

We're doing a buffet-style salad and taco bar for dinner, me and FH will have a small cake to cut but guests will be served cupcakes with a couple different flavors to choose from. All paid for and prepared by my FMIL as a wedding gift to us. She has some experience with events (and is a very good cook/baker!!) but mostly work events where alcohol is not served.

We are not allowed hard liquor per venue restrictions, which is actually preferable to us. We would still like to provide some light drinks for the adults. My FH and I don't really drink and have no idea what we should serve. We also don't want to spend too much on it. We're going for a more laid-back and intimate vibe, our whole guest list is our closest friends and family. Not like coworkers or third cousins that would be counting on the cocktails to get them through lol. Non-alcoholic drinks will include ice water, lemonade, sweet tea, and canned soda.

Anybody have recommendations? I hope the information above gave enough details about what we're going for here. Where should I buy bulk and what is popular? Thank you! ❤️

Honestly, I just need to bitch to strangers on the internet who don't know me

Me and SO got engaged last fall and started planning our wedding in January. We wanted something small in Italy, so we put feelers out on who would be able to attend in July. We had about a solid 20 people end of January who were excited and confirmed that they intended on going. That was good for us and we confirmed with the AirBNB that they would be okay with us hosting a dinner at the villa we rented. Since then, we've had a couple unexpected guests invite themselves (like my SO grandparents) who we couldn't exactly tell no and have just decided to expand the guest count.

I had originally asked two of my close girlfriends if they would be able to attend and one of them already had family obligations that week, so she said she could not attend and the other one chose not to attend because the other one was not going. Which I totally get, I would never expect someone to travel alone abroad for my wedding. Recently, the first friend talked to some of the other people attending and decided she could miss her family obligations after all, so now, a month and a half before the wedding, she is coming. Then, a couple days later, get a text from the other friend that she is coming now that the other friend is. I am very annoyed by this.

There's the obvious added financial cost, as since we had a smaller guest list, we opted for more extravagant events and catering and then there is the stress of maybe the AirBNB not being okay with the event.

I think I’m more annoyed that it didn’t seem important to them until they heard from other people how fun the wedding was going to be. Sure, other people were added to the guest list, but because they genuinely wanted to go, not because they heard how fun it was going to be (who knows, it may not even be fun lol). It makes me want to sit them ALLL the way at the end of the table.

Idk, I'm probably overreacting. What do you think? Agree or tell me to get over it lol

Edit: thanks for all the input! Sometimes it’s just good to vent. The Grandparents inviting themselves was very annoying, but we just chose the path of least resistance and accepted it. When it’s all said and done, I know it won’t even matter and everything will be fine.

They’re still getting sat at the end of the table though.

So I am getting married and my fiancés sister who will be 21 next month asked if she could be the flower girl. I thought it was super sweet that she wanted to be in the wedding and have something special to do, so of course we said yes.

My FSIL doesn't work and the family does not have money (FMIL and FSIL live with other family members). We both know this and actually my fiancé is planning to pay for his fathers suit and mothers dress. Both parents talked to my fiancé about it, so its upfront and clear that that is the expectation.

But my FSIL hasn't said a word about her dress. She hasn't asked what color to wear, she hasn't asked for help with purchasing a dress, she hasn't shown any interest in the wedding really. I imagine she maybe is just shy or embarrassed about the situation? But I want to make sure she has whatever she needs.

The problem is, she lowkey a little entitled in the family (as is the father). Not in a demanding way, but as an example the family will be invited out to birthdays and the sister and father will go. They will order the most expensive items and LOTS of items to have leftovers but have 0 plan to pay other than having my fiancé pay. He has told them before to stop doing that, but they kind of don't care. Its a symptom of a larger issue. On top of it, we found out later that she was given money by a family member to pay for herself, but pocketed it.

So the question is, should we just offer to pay and make sure she is taken care of and not make a big deal about it? Do we ask her to pay a nominal amount like $50 and the we cover the rest? And should my fiancé do it, or should I? Any advice here is appreciated!

Hi all! 2027 Bride here!! I’ve never really had “normal” hair. It’s naturally a light brown. But I have always colored it, cut it, even shaved half of it off once! The last couple years I’ve just let it be brown and not done anything to it. Mainly because everyone in my life has gotten married and it’s the more traditional look…. Now it’s my turn to get married and I can’t tell if I’ll regret having fun hair or if I’ll regret having plain!!!

I need advice on if I should start my hair journey now or leave it as is