Intimate or big wedding

We struggled a lot with the financial cost but my fiancé really wanted a wedding while I wanted to go to the courthouse.
We are having a 80 person wedding (despite me wanting a smaller list) and am only inviting immediate family/closest family member.
I prefer the intimate because you'll be able to chat with everyone. I'm sure we'll plan something larger for an anniversary party but this is somewhere in between. But we both compromised to get there... and it was hard!

We too had a small intimate wedding which was great though my side is larger than his side who did come out to enjoy themselves and being supportive as family. An intimate wedding doesn't seem bad of an idea with an after party with just family and friends as said to make the celebration feel special for now. A year after, you can celebrate with a full guest list to have your Anniversary/Vow Renewal/Reception a grand party. This will be something we will be doing for our 5th Anniversary to have everyone attend.

We had the same problem! I wanted a smaller wedding, even just an elopement, but my partner really wanted to do a bigger wedding. We settled with somewhere in the middle and we're doing a 60 person wedding, really just those we want and always imagined at our wedding. Also, a lot of relatives don't live in the same province, let alone the country so with COVID it cut our list down a lot. We're really aiming to have a smaller budget wedding so a lot of DIY and favours from friends and then we'll use some rest of the money to use for the honeymoon. We also aren't doing a registry and just doing a honeymoon fund "registry" instead since we live together and don't need things.

If it were up to me we would have just eloped but my husband was dead set against that idea. I think if money was no object he would have invited every person he's ever met and their dog lol. I personally think spending tens of thousands of dollars on a wedding is insane but it was really important to him so we compromised on 100 people max and a relatively low budget (still exorbitant imo because it's a wedding but low enough that we could have still afforded a nice honeymoon). Ultimately covid ruined our plans and we ended up having a small covid ceremony but we're still going to have a larger reception one day when restrictions are lifted.

View quoted message Thank you for your reply. We are at 100guest right now. My fiancé still find its a lot of people. He’s now a crowd person. Our wedding is for 2022 and I feel confident about the gathering.

I loved having a small and intimate wedding. We had about 20 people (all immediate family and the wedding party) and we actually got to spend time with them and enjoy ourselves. We saved money, we were relaxed, and I felt like we could be ourselves because we knew everyone there super well (unlike our extended family we barely see). It also made finding locations way easier since everyone could legally fit in my parents home and at the time we were planning our back up plan(s) no one knew what would be available or permitted.


My husband has actually said how happy he is that we had a pandemic wedding. He's not one for crowds and attention, and I'm so glad that he enjoyed our wedding. We hadn't planned anything huge or extravagant, but we will definitely be using the money we saved for our future.

I had a similar dilemma, I wanted small and my partner wanted bigger and so did his parents. We ended up compromising with 120 people and most of them on his side so he could have the wedding he and his parents wanted too without it being huge. We ended up having to postpone that because of COVID and now we are downsizing to 25 people for guest safety since we don't want to postpone anymore.
Maybe see if there is a way for you to do both by having a big bigger than he wants and a bit smaller than you want. And the rest of the money goes towards the trip!
Good luck!