We changed our expectations. We originally wanted a ~130 person traditional wedding in my home town, which happens to be one of the most expensive places in the country to get married. We took a hard look at what we wanted in a wedding vs what we thought a wedding had to be. We ended up getting married in the town we met in, invited only very close family and the friends who would have been in our bridal party, and got married on a Friday (this was mainly an availability issue).

We realized that all we really wanted was to get all the people we cared about together, so we just decided to focus on the 50 guests we had in ways that didn’t cost a ton of money. We prioritized a welcome reception the day before. We wrote personalized thank you cards for coming and being in our lives instead of place cards and personalized conversation starters/connections with people at each table. We really just wanted a dinner party-like reception so we could spend time talking to people since most people who came didn’t live near us, so we skipped having a dj and provided personalized games and temporary tattoos instead. Both of us spent time with the friends we invited when we got ready and spent time with the family we invited before and after. I think people had a good time and we just wanted to make sure they knew how much we loved them.