Can You Afford a Small Wedding?

                                              by Father Ken Zelten & The First Dance

One of the easiest ways to save money is to cut your guest list. This is taken as a Golden Rule of wedding planning. About forty percent of your wedding budget goes to the reception and food. If you have fewer people, the logic goes, you will save money feeding fewer mouths.

Unfortunately this piece of advice often backfires both financially but also emotionally. Why?

• Small wedding advice doesn't get to your values around who should be part of your day and creative options to avoid 40% of your budget going to an expensive reception
• Small wedding advice may not actually be true - smaller weddings can turn into a fancier affair or turn into a destination wedding (costing all your guests a tremendous amount of money)
• Small wedding advice doesn't address who is in your family and community and what they expect (mid-afternoon park wedding vs. a sit down meal)

Many couples go into wedding planning believing they will have a small, simple wedding, or at least WISHING they could have a smaller affair, believing it would be easier emotionally and financially. But those who come out the other end WITH a small, simple wedding is pretty small seeing as the average wedding is about 175 guests.

And for those who do succeed in having a small wedding, many are shocked at how much it still cost them and some admit if they knew before what they learned later, they would have gone ahead and had the bigger wedding and cut corners to avoid a lot of relationship drama.

Uniqueness of a wedding?

Weddings are unlike any other type of party. They are about bringing two families and your communities together to celebrate, in a public way, your new marriage and joining of your families. Unlike having your thirtieth birthday party with 5 friends or 50 friends, a wedding is a once-in-a-lifetime event. I often told my coworkers, who said I should just elope, that people only come together, guarenteed, for two events: funerals and weddings. I figured it was nicer to be together for a joyous occasion and not wait for someone to die!

Small Wedding Myth: Key Stakeholders Won't Care

The chances of anyone in your inner circle agreeing on an ideal wedding is low but as soon as you start excluding some people and including others, you enter a huge guest list landmine.  Whether you are trying to determine which family members should be invited - exclude second cousins? Only invite adults? you are entering into family loyalty, notions about what a wedding means, and potentially offending important loved ones. A worst case scenario is when you start building alliances among people (without your knowledge) who threaten to boycot the wedding if the others aren't invited.

Just because you barely know your parents friends or coworkers does not mean you should automatically consider them "extras". If your parents rely heavily on the friendship of these people and really want them to be there for THEIR big day (the day they aquire a new son or daughter-in-law and marry off their child). It is worth considering some of those people have been in your parents lives longer than you've been alive and that some of your friends or coworkers may vanish from your life in the next 5 years as your life changes.

Small Wedding Myth: You can Avoid Drama

Sometimes the desire to avoid stress actually creates it. You can think that fewer people means less fighting, fewer opinions, and more flexibility, not to mention less money stress. But ultimately the people who are likely to stress you out are the very people you may be ticking off: parents, grandparents, close relatives or friends. For every couple who loved their destination wedding there is another couple who has been given an emotional roller coaster by family or friends who don't appreciate the extraordinary time and money spent to attend "your" ideal wedding location.

Small Wedding Myth: You WILL Save Money

According to The Knot, 30% of your budget goes towards food. Another 21% goes towards things that would be impacted by your guest list: reception space, beverages, cake, and wedding invitations. Let's play out a common scenario.

You work all the numbers and you decide to not invite 100 people that you would normally invite. If food is $50 per person, you now feel like you've just saved $5,000 by not inviting those people. Let's add $3/person for a cake slice and $2/invitation per couple. That brings us to saving $5,200.

You have a smaller guest list which means you are looking at smaller reception venues. The most common place would be a restaurant. The only problem is restaurants need to meet minimums so they may charge you a minimum that shocks you a bit. If you do find a decent priced reception spot you feel like you have the ability to spend a little more on nicer food since you're saving over $5,000. You can also now afford a nicer wedding cake and your wedding invitations can be nicer since you need fewer of them. It is not uncommon to feel that you can "spend" your savings. It's a common mind-trick we all play any time we buy $100 worth of clothes but SAVED $200 because of sales. We still SPENT $100!

The Wedding Budget Money Game

The costs that won't really change with a big or small wedding include: the wedding dress, wedding photography, wedding videography, reception music, decorations, limo, rings, officiant, wedding party flowers/gifts, hotel, limo and hair/makeup. The point here is that psychologically when we feel like we're saving money we are more apt to spend more. And at least 49% of your costs won't change based on the size of the wedding. The idea of having a small wedding may cause angst for family members that you may get them to chip in - reducing your costs while being able to invite more people.

Getting Luxury at a Good Price

I admit we're all vulnerable to wanting the wedding of our dreams. Or at the very least, a wedding typical of what our friends are having. We don't want to experiment on our big day by doing something out of the ordinary, or not trendy. But here's an option to consider to feel like you're able to splurge AND invite loved ones at the same time.

What is something you absolutely LOVE? Let's say you love ice cream. This could become your centerpiece. You find the most luxurious ice cream in your area to serve at your wedding. You avoid all other costs around food by having your ice cream wedding and reception at 2pm - people will leave for their own dinner at 6pm. You've just saved a ton right there. You get creative and you get excited. The "theme" of your wedding, spread through you, your fiance, family and friends is that you guys have a tight budget but are still going to invite everyone you want. The way you're saving money is having this fun ice cream reception. Maybe you even invite local friends and family to parcipate by sharing their ice cream bowls and scoopers, they bring in any potential toppings that you serve in bowls. It becomes this very different and really fun wedding theme and people get excited.

It's also a good idea to talk with as many people as you can on what is needed and what isn't. Sometimes we just need the confidence of a wedding coordinator or friend to tell us nobody will even notice if you don't have favors (savings: $1-$2 per person). Or you learn that it's now trendy to not having a matchy-matchy bridal party (dress or flowers) so you decide to go to Sams Club and let your bridal party pick out their own flowers for a small bouquet and you let them where a dress they already own (coordinating they don't clash.)

It all comes down to what you value, and if you have a large community, that should be a blessing, not a curse, when it comes to wedding plans. If you can have confidence and show enthusiasm, people will love anything you plan because they want to take time out of their day for YOU, not for fancy food, or a live band, or to see you in a limo.