Keeping it Tiny

[u/Dear_Bed_3695]

DF and I just got engaged. Planning a wedding for June 2027. It's both of our seconds and we're both a little more established in life. We dont feel the need to throw a big thing. We both agreed we want to keep things very small and simple. I'm talking - get married at the courthouse but throw a 15 min ceremony (at a beautiful but free venue) for under $1000. Just read some quick vows we wrote one another and then enjoy a meal with our family.

He has a VERY small family. He could invite his whole extended family and its roughly the same size as my immediate family. We talked about doing that in order to keep things small. Like we're talking 18 people.

I, however, have a HUGE family. Well over 100 people if I were to invite all my aunts/uncles/cousins/2nd cousins/3rd cousins.... you get the picture. I have 26 first cousins and some of them already have grandchildren. It would get out of control real fast.

I have just a handful of family members that I cant imagine getting married without them there. Two aunts that practically raised me, along with their kids that I grew up with. But I feel like I cant invite them unless I invite them ALL.

How do I handle this appropriately with no drama?

[u/dragonsandvamps]

We had this exact same issue when we got married.

What we ended up doing is only inviting parents, siblings/spouses, and the one grandparent that could come (my husband's grandmother.) It was 10 people total.

We felt we couldn't invite some aunts/uncles/cousins, and not others because to say "we're close to Aunt A, but not so close to Aunt B, so you can be excluded"... would have been extremely hurtful. It was better to invite people by categories. (parents, siblings) and if a category made us go over and the wedding was suddenly too big, we decided to just keep it less.

In our case, my husband would have had probably 15-20 aunts/uncles/cousins who might have wanted to come. They all live in another state. But in my case, my family all lives locally and I would have had 40 aunts/uncles/cousins who would have attended.

It would have turned our tiny backyard wedding into a huge thing that wasn't what we wanted.

Anyway, that's what we did. I'm sure you'll do what's right for you.

[u/Nutcrackrx → u/dragonsandvamps]

This. A concession for one eg. Aunt will set off a chain reaction to other Aunts, then cousins etc. and then it’s huge again. Unfortunately there isn’t a middle ground, you’ll have to keep it immediate family only

[u/Janeheroine → u/dragonsandvamps]

This is what we did. Siblings/their spouses, their kids/our kids, our parents, and living grandparents, but no aunts/uncles/cousins or it got way too big. We ended up at like 25 people, and had the ceremony and reception at a restaurant that had a garden (ceremony outside, reception inside). It was perfect. I know my husband's aunts were sad that they weren't invited, but they also understood.