Your wedding day will be one of the best, most exciting, and important days of your life. So many details go into planning a wedding. There are tons of decisions that need to be made, even before you decide where you want the ceremony and reception to be held, what colors you want your theme to be, and what you want your dress to look like. Of course all of those things are incredibly important and fun to choose, however the smartest thing you and your husband-to-be can do is sit down together, just the two of you, and decide what kind of wedding do you want to have. More importantly, do you want to have a big wedding or a small wedding? Most brides these days (And even grooms) want their wedding to be as big as it is important. They want everyone they can think of to share in their joy and be a part of their special day. Other brides prefer a smaller affair with only their closest friends and family attending a very private and intimate event. Both options can create a beautiful wedding, but what works best is what the bride and groom decides is the best thing for them.
There are a lot of factors that will go into deciding what is going to be the best option for size, for the two of you. One important factor is money. It would be great if everyone had an unlimited budget for their special day, but not everyone is so fortunate. It's no secret that more people equals more money, so if you are working with a limited budget, it might make more sense to keep the guest list down to a minimum, and spend the remaining money on food, flowers, favors, and everything else that will make your day special. Other brides may opt to invite all the guests they want, and to bargain shop and eliminate when it comes to all of the little extra touches that may or may not be necessary for your wedding. There's also the option of finding the perfect location that won't require a lot of extra spending. You may be able to accommodate everyone and not have to worry about budgeting for flowers, centerpieces, or dessert for every table.
Perhaps you already have the perfect location in mind for your reception. When I planned my wedding my husband and I had a smaller, restaurant-style theme in mind for our wedding. We wanted it to be more of a dinner party type of feel, which probably wouldn't be adequate if we had wanted to invite over 200 people to share our day with us. Although we took the time to look at some banquet halls in our area, we still kept searching for the perfect restaurant that would accommodate our wishes. When we finally did stumble across the location we ended up using, the maximum amount of people we could have invited would have been approximately 100. That was fine with us, since we had chosen to have a smaller wedding anyhow, but the location was so perfect for what we wanted, I have a feeling we would have considered cutting down the list if need be. On the other side of things, if we had chosen to utilize a banquet hall for our reception, we may have felt compelled to invite more people to fill out the room more, since banquet halls tend to be more open, and have more seating space to them. It would be silly to book a banquet hall if you only intend to invite 50 people to your wedding. If you've opted to put a good deal of importance onto your choice of location, you may be influenced and make a guest list decision.
More importantly is the guest list itself, and who is on it. Some people come from very large families, while others grew up with a much smaller circle of family around them. Everybody will have certain family members that they absolutely have to include, and from there, the guest list expands to extended family, and even further extended family. Some couples prefer to include all family, while others decide to draw a line at the family members that they never see, or sometimes, don't even know. Nothing is wrong with this, as long as you are making sure you are including those who definitely should be present, and you work outward from there. Once you have a rough draft of a list, you'll find if you look at the list a few times, not only will you think of other people that need to be included, but you'll also decide that you may have initially included people that you may not end up wanting to invite. Friends, of course, are added to the list, and its up to the bride and groom how far you want to go with that portion of the list. Besides including your closest friends who have known you the longest, and know you the best, do you want to include co-workers, and old friends you only see a couple of times a year? You'll be surprised how quickly your list will grow if you're not careful.
Both big and small weddings have their pros and cons. The beauty of weddings is that each engaged couple has the ability to plan what makes them happy, and what reflects them as a couple. The wedding that is an extensive, large, lavish event may be exactly what one bride and groom wants, while another couple might cringe at the thought of having that kind of wedding. The important thing is to plan what it is that the two of you want. If you keep it limited, or you go all out, as long as you decided what is right for you and went with that, it's a guarantee you will both be happy with what you planned. Both options can end up being the best wedding someone has ever been to if its done right.
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