How To Handle a Big Family Wedding on a Small Budget | Wedding Q&A

Well, hello lovely humans and welcome to Engage, a wedding planning podcast for the modern day couple. I'm your host, Jamie Wolfer, and I truly believe that wedding planning does not need to be complicated or time consuming. I kind of picture these episodes like jumping on a quick phone call with your wedding planner. You get your answers and you go on your merry way. Because sometimes not all of us have an hour to dedicate to listening to super long podcasts or super long intros. So without further ado, let's just jump right on into it. Today's episode is going to admittedly be a little bit all over the place. You see, every single month I sit down with the people over in the Master plan course and answer your questions in Lifetime. So if you find yourself struggling and really need to sit down and speak with a real life wedding planner, I would love to be a part of your wedding planning journey. Join us over in the Master plan today to get your questions answered. Until then, take a listen. I've been looking at venue options that are listed on the Knot and Zola and I am questioning if this is the best source for venue shopping. Oh, within my budget. Welcome. Mm. Would you say these are great resources to use when venue shopping to stay within our budget with Within Budget, or are there other resources to look into? If so, what resources do you suggest? I've also looked at Peerspace and do not love many of the listings. My budget is 25k and I'm located in Atlanta. My problem may be that I am looking for something all inclusive. All inclusive or almost all inclusive? Okay, so there's a whole slew of venue videos that we can toss into the chat. My guess is you've probably already seen them. And if you couldn't tell by my emotional response, I have a personal bone to pick with the Knot when it comes to this kind of stuff. In fact, there is. There's this big legal thing that's happening with them. It's. It's kind of crazy where they're selling leads or they're selling the idea of leads to vendors and then vendors are getting leads that are not even in the same state or within like a 300 mile radius. It's pretty crazy. I. I personally don't think the Knot is a great place to look because sometimes you'll get fed locations that are nowhere near you that might be within your budget, but it's like in Nevada and you're in California. Like what is. What is happening? So my personal preference for finding a good venue is a local Facebook group. I will die on this hill. I think that getting into a Facebook group will get you. Exactly. It's like a. It's like the. It's. It's the ultimate Google search, being in a Facebook group. Absolutely. Because you can go in there and say, here's what I'm looking for. Here's my budget. What do you have? And you'll either have venues in there that are like, here's what we've got. Here's what our availability looks like, or you'll have brides saying, here's what I got married. It fits that price point if it's exactly what you're looking for. So that's why I like the idea of Facebook groups. We have one if you've not joined it. I think we've got like 80,000 people in it, which is wild. That's insane, you guys. But if you want to come join us in there, that could be. That could be a great resource because ours is national. I guess it is a little bit international, but we could have some resources for you in there. But best, best, best thing that you can do, especially when you're looking for something like this all inclusive. My budget for a venue is this, and I'm located in Atlanta, willing to travel up to an hour away, whatever it happens to be, then you can really kind of get that catered to exactly what you're looking for. Sitting here listening to a podcast is all fine and dandy, right? But sometimes you need an actual person to be asking some of these questions to, and you may be sitting there going, you know what, Jamie? Actually, yeah, that. That makes a lot of sense. I would love to be able to ask you these questions because guess what? You need to join the master plan. You've heard me talk about it, but do you know why I love it so much? You get over 10 lessons that walk you through planning your wedding with videos and spreadsheets and other detailed resources along the way. Join me and my virtual clients over in the master plan and get all your wedding planning questions answered. Literally thousands of couples have gone on this journey with me, and I'd love for you to be next. Check it out@wolferandco.com tmp that's wolferandco.com tmp Listen. Wedding budgets suck. They're just like the actual worst. And the hardest part for me is that weddings are not cookie cutter. They're not one size fits all. And I think it's important to make sure that you're budgeting according to your priorities. Build a budget that works with your vision and you'll be on the path to planning a wedding that you really want. So if you want my recommendations for making your perfect budget for you and your partner, head on over to weddingpriorities.com I won't be able to make the call, but I need advice. My question is related to budgeting in a way, but has a lot to do with the guest list for context purposes. This is going to be long. Sorry. Don't apologize. If you guys need to word vomit, please, I will take it. Don't worry. We have about 500 people on our guest list and we definitely cannot afford to feed that many people. Especially considering that it's not even including us or vendors which we are feeding for sure. Not to not about to forget about them. We both have huge families so they make up the majority of that list. We were trying to decrease the number. However we have run into a problem. The friends we have on our list we want for there for sure so we don't want to get rid of them. We see that we see most of them more than a lot of our family members. Both our families are very family oriented. My family is the kind where all of my siblings five parents, two went with my brother to look for and purchase a car. That's cute. It wasn't even his first car. My fiance is from a small town, population of 100 maybe car the same town we are getting married in and is surrounded by other small towns. His family from the area so they won't need to travel very far. I moved out here which was very difficult since I'm super close with my family. My closest family is eight hours away driving. I'm not even. I'm not sure how many people from my family who are all out of state would even be able to make it to my wedding. This is where the problem lies. After talking with my mom, she's unsure who would or wouldn't come. She basically said that I really needed to invite the whole family though. I was going to base it off my mother. I was going to base it off my brother's wedding since he just got married two months ago. However, I've already spoken to some family members that were not at his wedding. They said they were so excited about my wedding and to see everyone, especially since they couldn't make my brothers. I haven't even sent out save the dates or invites to anyone and we weren't discussing my wedding at the time. They just brought it up. Other family members have addressed the topic of my wedding as well who did not go to my brother saying they're excited about it and cannot wait. Same with friends. So my worries have multiple folds. One, we went from thinking a lot of them would not be able to come, which could still happen to some of them whom we have not invited yet, saying they cannot wait. Originally, we were just going to invite everyone and think of some as courtesy invites since we thought that they for sure would not be able to. But now I'm second guessing that. Two, we are struggling with taking people off the list. We are worried about taking off some people who we want there to make space for the family members we would also like there. What if those family members end up not actually coming because we are so far away and now our friends didn't get an invite? Three, also, it's basically my side that's up in the air. So it's making a bit. So it's making it a bit difficult to compromise on his side. Both of us do not want to take people off his list that we know for sure would be able to come because the possibility that mine might. However, I also feel bad only cutting from my side. I want my family too, not just his. I should. I should also add in room space. We have enough room and at the reception area for everyone as far as dancing goes, but not at the church. The closest, bigger town, slash city, which is where the majority of my family would stay, is 45 minutes away from our church and 55 from the reception area. I don't know what to do. Gabby, first of all, I just want to say thank you for trusting me with this. I'm sorry you weren't able to make it because I wish I could just speak into you right now. But if as you're listening to this, pretend it's live, okay? Pretend I'm talking to you live. Because this is a really hard place to be. I just want to acknowledge that first and foremost. That sucks. That sucks. And you're right. You are in a position where you. You are kind of stuck and you have to make some hard decisions. One, if the church space is non negotiable, it's non negotiable. I think traveling 45 minutes between locations is pushing it. Anything above that's pretty far. I hope your reception space is large enough. Okay, Just trying to process through how, how to help because obviously if you're trying to do this on a budget, I would cut the meal. I would make it appetizer and dessert only. You can go real ham. You can get so much good food from Costco. Okay. So much good food from Costco. Or even if we want to do like a Costco style buffet with the pinwheels and the, the pre made things, is it the most bougie, luxurious experience? No, but if we plate it up nicely enough, it could look great. Or go appetizers, giant charcuterie, like a really huge grazing board. Have someone put that together for you. But I think cutting dinner would be the wisest in this situation like this. As far as cutting your guest list, whoever you send an invitation to, you need to anticipate them coming. That just, just even if you're like, I'm hoping they don't expect that they're going to. So if that helps you kind of delineate better how many people you are going to invite, that could help or hurt, you know, it's still going to hurt, but it could help you make better cuts. As far as the church is concerned, I would limit it to. I would go, I would go UK style on this, which is wild. They have evening guests. I don't know if you've heard about this and I think this is like culturally across the board, they have evening guests, which we don't usually do here, where they have people that only after dinner is served for drinks and dancing. You could do something similar, right, where it's like, hey, we're having a private ceremony. As much as you want everybody there physically, you can't, you can't have everyone there and then invite them to the reception afterwards with heavy appetizers, really good desserts. And there's ways that you can literally just get food from the grocery store, but as long as you plate it correctly or get cake stands or have a lot of fun with the decor and the height and the how it's put together. So you need some volunteers to jump in and help you out with that. It will present a lot nicer than the plastic packaging that comes in. So we can pull that part off. I'm not worried about that part. As long as you have people that are willing to jump in and help you out with that. And it sounds like they can fit in the reception space. So hopefully I'm understanding that correctly. Another option that you can do is you can host a secondary reception close to your hometown, which makes it difficult, right, because then you'll still have to make some cuts for your family. But at this point, I don't know if you have a whole lot of options. Especially when we're looking at 500 people, they're not going to fit. So here's what I do. Only send out invitations to people that you want to come or end when you want. Sorry. Whomever you send an invitation to expect them to show up. Like we're not. Not courtesy invites necessarily because now that you're saying that there's. There may not even be a chance of that they might all just come limit who's there at the ceremony. This could ruffle some feathers. If you want to try live streaming it, you can. That makes things a little bit more complicated. Cut down to apps and desserts only. Go real streamline on the drinks. And then lastly, consider doing a secondary reception which you can do potluck style at like a community center or at a park. Like it does not have to be a reception reception, but it's a great way of honoring the members of your family that can't make it and whittling down the guest list in a practical and manageable manner. However, I know that this feels to you like, yeah, but I'm the only one that's losing people on my guest list on my side that there. This doesn't feel like a win win. You know, I do have a couple of videos that might help or if you find yourself in a similar situation, if anyone's listening, there's one that's called 8 Ways to Cut your guest list and there's another one called you have to invite them. So like wedding guest rules to go off of. But when it's all family, it just, it gets really hard. I'm doing a first look with my dad and my brothers, but not my fight, not with my fiance. How can I structure my timeline so that we get all the photos we want without rushing? We only have the venue starting at 10am the ceremony starts at 3pm So I would say. And it's all at the same place, I'm assuming. I'm sure you can jump in the chat and let me know if it's not. I would say it's probably a good idea. Well, your photographer should be the one to direct this so I can give ideas right now. But the end of the day, you need your photographer to tell you the answer to this because they know how long they need with you, they know the size of your bridal party and they know how long their services are. So structuring your timeline would mean, I would think probably an hour before your wedding to do the first look with your dad and brothers. You probably will have done your wedding party photos before that. So bridesmaids, groom, groomsmen, etc. So then an hour before you do the first look with dad and brothers, 30 minutes before we have you hidden, getting all chill, getting ready, getting your heart ready because like at this point your body and your hair is already. And then ceremony is probably half an hour. So it ends 3:30 ish. I would go 3:30 to 4:45, maybe 5 ish for cocktail hour. Gives you plenty of time. Also depends on the lighting. So I don't know what time of year you're getting married, so obviously right now it's pitch black outside where I'm at, but it might be a little bit different for you, so just bear in mind the time of sunset. But once you kick off cocktail hour, all the guests go and start eating, drinking, enjoying themselves and that's when you can go off with and that's when you go off and get the couple's photos. That's when you can get all of the wedding party together. That's when you get the family photos. Actually, family photos come first, so I don't know. I listed them third. Does that help? All at the same venue. Great. That's kind of how I'd structure it or how I'd suggest structuring it. And then you take that to your photographer and you're like, hey, does this work for you? Perfect. Good. I'm so glad. If you are struggling with wedding planning and you have questions and you just need someone to listen and to chat with, come join us in the master plan community over@themasterplanwed.com. i would love to have you in there. Thanks so much for listening. If you haven't done so already, subscribe, jump on over to wherever you're listening to this podcast and leave a five star review so we can let the podcast people know that Jamie knows what she's talking about out sometimes. And until next time, bye, guys.