'small' weddings

I think that some blogs just write whatever they think of just to add content, and even just look at other blogs for content ideas and round and round it goes without the blog writer having ANY actual experience in what they are writing about.

Being a Leicester wedding photographer for many years I can say that 60 is a normal amount, 100 is big 120 is very big 20 is small. But that is just in my area - other areas may be different.

Over the years I have seen that the average size of wedding has got smaller as around 10 years ago I would be saying that 100 was the average normal amount.

Ignore the blogs and have the wedding that you want and not the one blogs and magazines tell you that you should be having

We've got around 95 for the day and will go up to 130ish for the evening. We both have a fair size family who we genuinely want to be there but we also want friends as they tend to make the day a bit more lively in our experience.

If our families weren't so large and our friends weren't all settling down themselves, I dare say the list would be a lot smaller and it wouldn't bother us at all. We won't be inviting people just for the sake of it, we're just lucky to have so many people in our lives who we want to celebrate with even if it does end up costing us!

We had an actually small wedding with 10 guests and whenever I was googling stuff for small or intimate weddings, it brought up results for 50-60 guests which was so not helpful. To me 50-60 guests is also not small, I would consider it a medium-sized wedding.

We could have easily had a bigger wedding but it wasn't what we wanted, we really wanted to elope so even 10 guests was already more than we'd originally planned (though it was lovely).

Basically, ignore what all these blogs and websites say. Some people literally invite all people they're related to, maybe some parents even invite some of their friends (if parents are paying) that the couple has never met, and some people have huge families and big circles of friends. If we had done that, I don't know where exactly we would have ended up but probably still under 100 or just over, but some weddings have 300 guests!

Much more important to have the people there with you who matter most, not to fit some convention or other.

Oh ignore the blogs!

We are having roughly 70 (I keep forgetting) that's for the whole day, and I would struggle to add more. I wouldn't class it as a small wedding, but then if your immediate familes combine come to 80, friends 30, then 60 will be small in comparison. However if your combine family number is 10, friends 20 then 60 is a huge wedding.

I really wouldn't be worried about how many is the right number, as long as everyone you and OH want there are invited - it no matter.

I invited 19 and 11 came. To me that was perfect.

I would definitely consider 50-60 to be a medium sized wedding. We are having 100 - 115 and I think that as fairly large, especially for UK standards...over in the States their wedding are much bigger

Nik is definitely right about the States - you've just got to watch American wedding programmes and they talk about inviting 300 - 500 people! Crazy!!

I'm biased as we're having 65 but I would definitely say it's a medium size wedding!

I'm having 48 people to ours and this will go up to 140 in the evening. We wanted immediate family only to the day with additional friends and family in the evening.

We're having 19 (plus a baby) at ours and we feel that's both small and intimate. As you say, we're not keeping it small for budget purposes. Far from it. In fact we're spending more on our wedding than I did for my first (100 day guests and an additional 50 ish evening guests)!!!

We have about 60 people for the day at the moment, with approximately 100-120 on the evening.

I feel like this is quite a lot of people, but then again... we are inviting pretty much everyone we know, so 120 seems quite sad when we put it that way! Most of our guests are family - we don't have many friends *cue violin music* lol

x

This is a really interesting thread, it's been good to hear different perspectives. We had 100 people and I considered that a medium sized wedding. I have a large family plus me and OH are older so we had more friends. If I had gotten married 10 years ago, it would have been a smaller wedding.

We are thinking to invite 40-50 and consider that small. We would love to invite 70-80 but just don't know enough people that we'd really want to be at our wedding (and pay for) though.

We are having 45-50 guests at our wedding and I would class that as a small/medium wedding which is what we were going for!

The difference for us is that but for us only 2/5 of the guests are family. Most of our guests are friends who we love spending time with and people who we would look back on photographs and still have a relationship with them and remember why they were part of our day.

It depends on where the blogs you are reading are based. We are getting married in the States and are expecting 100-125 people. Every time I've spoken to vendors they've told me they consider anything under 150 "small" (and there are no evening guests so you have to feed everyone ? )Many of the venues I looked at had such high food and beverage minimums that you would have to invite well over 100 people just to meet them.

OH has a really small family and mine isn't very big either. We originally planned to have 40 guests but the smallest package at our venue is 60 day guests and 80 evening guests. I think we may struggle to meet those numbers if we have a lot of declines though! The last few weddings I've been to have been around the same size, with maybe a few more evening guests so I'd say that was medium-sized.

I think we will end up with about 90-100 at our evening (not having any guests at all for the ceremony!) and I was actually worrying that people would think that was not many! I know a few friends who had about 200 evening guests (!!) - I don't even know 200 people!

I feel reassured now looking at the replies on this post, I wouldn't want any more guests than we are having, it must be exhausting trying to talk to everyone!

Honestly, don't worry at all! It's not a small wedding. We had just over 60 and a few more in evening, it felt like a nice size! xx

I wouldn't say that 60 is a small wedding, more medium sized. Definitely ignore what the blogs/websites say, everyone is different, people have bigger families and friendship groups than others.

We're having 110 in the day, rising to about 180 at night (these are estimates as we haven't sent out invites yet). It would be closer to 140 if we had invited children!

This is largely because I have a huge family, and fiance wanted to invite more friends as a balance. More of my friends will therefore be coming to the evening do. It really is each to their own, too many people like to put pressure on people planning weddings.

Ignor blogs and what people say as different people want different things at their wedding and no ones family is identical, we had 15 in lapland and that would be classed under cheap budget according to the blog but going away is certainly not cheap. Have the people who matter to you. I couldn't bare to have a bunch of family I havent spoken to in years at our wedding! Even now I'm getting people from the past or associates of friends trying to snoop at photos onky to find out they aren't on my Facebook hehe. We have invited 100 to the uk party but our families are big and we have massively cut down! We're expecting around 80 to show but I would have preferred around 60 if I could have done without loosing people who mean something to either of us. Your not a misery guts or Billy no mates you are sticking to your guns and doing what is right for you both ?

We were at a wedding with 50 a few months ago. It was lovely.

Our wedding is 111 during the day (50 of which are his family, 15 are my family and the rest are all good friends) and another 35-40 in the evening. Unfortunately we just couldn't not invite his family (although I haven't invited cousins I never see or speak to etc etc).

Have what wedding YOU want. It's no-ones business if you only have 2 people at your wedding or have 200!

I would say that anything between 50-60 people is a medium wedding. We are having 100 day guests (only 38 of those are my guests!) I would prefer less people but the OH wants to invite everyone that he knows! We have 40 evening spaces at the moment but there are 58 on the evening list so far (only 4 are my guests!) The more people you have, the less time you have with everyone!