Big Families in Small Weddings

I have a pretty big family, and we are cutting our list to 50 (from 140). We first removed any family friends and extended family (anyone besides grandparents, aunts and uncles, and cousins) and any friends who weren’t in the wedding party. On my side I cut all my cousins, and then just chose aunts and uncles who I am close to. We also cut all plus ones unless they were married or we were friends with both people in the couple. We ended up with 47!

My husband and I were opposite in family counts. His side was way smaller than mine to make a guest list. Putting the numbers together would have come over 100+ given I have family international, US and locally provincial. His side being on the east side of Pickering to Port Hope of only 14 people only.

We only had 72 guests plus 4 vendors in 2017 (fortunate before the covid) in total. The numbers were 50 of my immediate family from US and here and minus a few of his family members along with co workers and friends. We did have to cut down the list due to budget and minimal to meet our medium.

We don't have big families and are still struggling with the guest list. We are both only children (though I have 2 sisters and 2 brothers on my dads side I didn't grow up with). I only need my one sister and her husband to come though before covid my niece and nephew were on guest list. I have to call venue today to see if we have to have the wedding on our contracted day. The venue set an 80 person minimum (that obviously can't work) so we can't have the wedding we originally wanted. We can easily have a guest list of 80 but the 50 has been so hard. Even if we invited 50 people most are coming from Toronto so they may not be allowed to join us. We can't have dancing and we both want to postpone. I guess fingers crossed they will let us.

View quoted message Good luck with everything!

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Yeah, covid pretty much gave anyone the legitimate excuse to cut out of towners randoms from the invite list. We had a few like that originally and if it weren't for the pandemic, it would've been fine if they wanted to come as we had room. But now that it's not the case, we've had a few elders demanding we make room for them or postpone until they can come. It's definitely weird that someone would assume they get dibs, especially over close friends and family, due to blood relation and age.

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At this point, it looks like we have to eliminate cousins as well. Which sucks because she's much more closer to her cousins due to the age gap but parents will prioritize the elders first.

We are at 65 people with only close family and friends. We have already postponed once from July 2020 to May 2021 so no matter what we will be married in May 2021. If that means cutting the list again, then everyone should understand.

We actually started with less as we were going to do a destination wedding originally. When that meant my sister and my best friend may not have made it, then it was a local wedding however the only "extras" that were invited were the ones on our original list who said they couldn't make the destination at the beginning. I have only invited one cousin from my dads side of the family as I only see the rest of them once a year. It was a hard decision and and easy one at the same time.

In a way, Covid has solved this problem for us. My family is from the East Coast. My mother comes from a family of 12, and I have 28 first cousins just on that side. Most of the cousins have spouses and children, so a family wedding can quickly balloon to over 100. Somehow others in the family have managed to pull this off, but even before the pandemic, I was like "how?" and "no way!"

We're still aiming for May for a small ceremony, and it's too big an ask to have people outside of my immediate family travel to Toronto (it's a big ? right now if even that will be possible!) Now at least I don't have to invite a cousin I haven't seen in years, or an uncle who can't tell the difference between me and my sister. I was basically going to have to make the call of "Do I have a close relationship with this extended family member?" and just deal with the guaranteed fallout. Not fun but necessary.

We both have big families, so for our intimate ceremony we're just having our parents there to keep it from seeming like we are leaving people out. Our original guest list of 130 was mostly family

We ended up having 30 for our small ceremony last month (including us, our photographer, and our officiant). To keep it small we were very strict and kept it to immediate family only (parents, siblings and their families), and our wedding party (3 on each side plus spouses so 12 total). Our situation is a bit different...since we postponed our big wedding to next year, it made it easier to tell extended family and friends that they weren't invited this year because we were able to say we'll hopefully celebrate together next year. However now that it's done, I'm anticipating next year may not happen because of Covid still . I definitely found it easier to have a blanket rule like "only immediate family". I felt like if we invited my now husband's aunt and uncle for example, we'd have to invite my aunt and uncle, and if we invited them, we'd have to invite my cousin and her wife, and so on and so forth.

Some of my close girlfriends who couldn't attend got together and sent me flowers the day before the wedding with a sweet message which I appreciated so much, and I was able to send them some pictures throughout the morning of me getting ready so it made me feel like they were still apart of the day somehow.

It's definitely not easy to cut down your list, so I wish you and your fiancé the best. No matter who is there, I'm sure it will be a memorable day for you both!

View quoted message Ah I see. It's a very tough situation. I definitely know I'm in a constant back and forth with my mom. She keeps on saying she'll just squeeze in two more people despite me telling her that's not how this works. I mean ultimately it's her/your descion and sometimes keeping the family peace is better. Is there anyway her friends could celebrate with her/ you in another way? Breakfast, dinner, or lunch the day before. Something more intimate. Or for the wedding could she just invite the parents siblings (aunt/uncle) but not invite their children (cousins), So there is at least representative from the families but allows for her to have her friends there as well. She could explain the importance of wanting both but the struggles of limited numbers due to covid?

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I totally get where you're coming from. It's much easier for me because I don't have much family here and I am more than okay with axing the extended family off the list. But despite eliminating cousin spouses and their children to make room for my people, that still leaves no room for any of her friends. She's close to a lot of her family members that make up the majority of her social interactions but she also have 4-5 close friends that she sees on a regular enough basis (coffee, going to the gym, etc) that I would want to attend because I think she'll really appreciate having their presence. But her parents would give her major flak for not inviting her uncles and aunts (their siblings) and their children (their cousins) and she's the type who has a really hard time going against parental wishes.

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We're in the same boat. Pandemic made cutting out family friends easy but if things were normal, we'd have to invite them.

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There's definitely no obligation to have a "big" wedding. If 30 is already maxing out your sweet spot then I would stick to it (plus, it makes it way easier in case covid is still around).

I was never one to want a huge wedding, so we are planning on 30 people (including us).
Parents, siblings, grandparents (only have 1 set anyways), wedding party (2 on each side) and closest friends.

No kids, cousins, aunts, uncles, etc, as it gets to be too many and we just aren't very close to them.
Honestly even coming up with that number was difficult, I'm wondering if we should invite more!
I wish you luck!

My guest list is 75 and 5 for vendors. Going from 130 to 75 I did this by taking out the family members that I thought I personally wasn't close to. Even if I see them once or twice a year for major holidays . I opted for my friends, parents siblings, and a few cousins. My partner on the other hand could easily get married with noone present. So it wasn't hard for him to cut down his list. He opted for his immediate family and friends and a handful of cousins. If we have to decrease our numbers again to 50. I will choose my immediate family, my 1 close aunt, her husband, my cousin and her child, plus my 5 closest friends. On my partner's side his immediate family is pretty big so it would probably just be them, their partners, and then his few closest friends. So basically there wouldn't really be any aunts, uncles, cousins etc. I do have a pretty big family here so I can only imagine how difficult it is. For me my friends are closer then most of my family members, and would be the people I want to celebrate the day with and I don't see anything wrong with that, even if i get backlash.

I must admit, cutting our list down was not easy. In the Armenian culture, you have to invite EVERYONE. But I made it very clear to my parents that we really want our close friends there as well. Luckily my parents are easy going. So we settled on immediate family only, and our closest friends who in reality are like family to us.

View quoted message So 5 on each side.
It consisted of 3 siblings, the rest friends.

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How big was your wedding party? Did it consist of family members too or just friends?

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Yeah, it's a slippery slope of family vs friends and inviting one means inviting all.

By the way, congrats on your big day! Would love to hear more about how it went.

So we had an original guest list of 260, both large families. We ended up having 25 people due to Covid.
We did:
ParentsSiblingsWedding Party GrandparentsNieces and nephews
We did no cousins, aunts or uncles.
We ended up not having any friends other than our wedding party.

We planned a small wedding from the start, and we had immediate family and friends at ours. We invited parents, grandparents, and one aunt/uncle from each side (we didn’t have siblings to worry about). We had way too many cousins to invite them all (and their spouses and kids) so we kept it small. Some people voiced dissent, but once we were firm with our answer, they stopped complaining to us. If anything, covid reinforced our decision and people ended up agreeing with it.