Friendless and planning a wedding

[Foxysoxy01]

Sorry this is long.

My DP and I are planning our wedding at the moment and I have some lovely plans. I'm enjoying looking at Pinterest and imagining what I could do.

My main problem is that I am absolutely friendless. This makes me sad sometimes but I mainly suck it up and get on with things.

I can't imagine how utterly embarrassing it is going to be getting married with nobody to invite.

The loss of friends started when I had a bit of a mental health breakdown. I had been distancing myself from people for a while and then started having a massive anxiety disorder which I still suffer from, albeit nowhere near as extreme. I lost some very close family members and just generally closed off. This has obviously left me with no friends, no social life and not a very close family.

I find it very hard to meet new people as I work from home, have animals I deal with after work and then find I have very little time to do much else. The anxiety also makes it really hard to get out new places as I feel I can't go too far from the car or anywhere too busy, even thinking about walking round Tesco is a struggle (I am working through this and under a therapists care)

Getting to My aibu, my DP thinks we should just have a ceremony just me him and parent/s because it would be too difficult to find people to attend the wedding and anyone we could ask would probably think it strange we are asking them, and I believe he is worried about how I will feel with the rejection.

But I really want a wedding and am so worried I will look back and wish I could've had a 'normal' wedding day.

I'm not sure what the answer is and just feel terribly sad about it all. I think I am probably being UN and need to just accept that it will be me and OH in a registry office then back to feed the animals, but I just wish for more really.

I so want you to wear an empire style dress and arrive at the church on horseback. It would be awesome! Your DH could wear morning suit to fit in.

I don't suppose there's a really nice country pub nearby? you could ride there from the church, have a good meal, then, of course, you have to get home to look after the animals.

If his family aren't very nice, they'll be not very nice whatever you do. You may as well enjoy the day. We had one relative like that and it was our goal to get at least one negative comment from her. We even had a list of things she was likely to say, and then checked through it after the wedding to see how well we'd done.

I love the idea of inviting some of the elderly. Another idea; if you have a local children's charity, you could always ask if there's a little girl who isn't having an easy time in life who would love to be a bridesmaid.

Here's an idea for DP's family: Insult Bingo. Write down all the insults you are expecting from them in a Bingo card format, cross them off during the day, and watch their faces when you shout "Bingo!"

Yes to all the advice here!
The smallest wedding I have been to is 4. Me, DP, bride and groom and we had a lovely time at the RO and the 'reception'.
Congratulations.

If you are anywhere near us OP, DD and I would love to come to a wedding with fairground stalls, you don't have to feed us or anything and we will bring a present AND wear regency style. Heck, DD would give her last Barbie to be a flower girl....

Some lovely suggestions on here and huge congratulations on your wedding and marriage.

This very week I have been a witness at the wedding of a LOVELY MumsNetter.
I didn't know her, the groom, the other witness, the registrar or the celebrant. And that was it. Six of us.
It was utterly lovely and perfect and I cried.

Quality, not quantity

OP I envy you... I have the opposite problem! Well... almost the opposite. Like you, I feel totally friendless. I have lots of acquaintances, I walk down the road and meet tens of local mums I can have lovely endless small talk with. I go to parents' drinks and am in the middle of the action, I've had great jobs and great career and yet... absolutely noone to go for lunch with on a Sunday. Noone who calls me to invite me to a girlie night out. Noone I would feel I could invite to my wedding... It hurts a lot although I think I'm definitely pushing some people away if I feel that a relationship is shallow and I just cant abide small talk for long. Also, like you, I went through a period of depression after my first marriage broke down, I lost some friends then (or I pushed them away - I'm not sure), and I've struggled to build my new network ever since. My family is very complicated, not great at all, and my mum is not well enough to travel (they live abroad). My DP, on the other hand, is from a very big happy family where nothing bad has ever happened (although I struggle to believe it), has friends from his town who grew up with etc... I don't care about having a big day, I just want to marry HIM, I want to elope, get married abroad, just the two of us and the children, without the stress of family there, the stress of me feeling that I have absolutely noone I could invite. It feels awful. He gets very upset about it as he wants a traditional big wedding with everyone there. For me - this would ruin everything. For him - not having this would ruin everything. So we got engaged 4 years ago and haven't done anything to plan our wedding since as all discussions end in arguments. Two things I want to tell you - 1. having had a "proper" wedding in the past - the "big day" is really massively overstated. The big stuff happens in your heart, not in the people who witness you. 2. you may not have millions of superficial friends because perhaps you look for deeper, more meaningful relationships and struggle to find them. Most people never find them although you would never believe it looking at their Facebook posts. We are all generally lonely in this life and social media make us feel like failures because we feel lonely. Don't let it suck you up. The person with 300 hundreds friends at their wedding may actually be more lonely than you are - if you are really happy and connected to your DP, you have more than most people have. Trust me X

meant - overrated, not overstated

and I will come to your wedding too if you are nearby X

OP there are some lovely ideas here. I had a very small wedding; parents, siblings/partners and an uncle. We got married at a castle/hotel and everyone stayed in incredible rooms with four-poster beds. We played golf in the afternoon and had a lovely dinner with no speeches. Mum in law made a fruit cake (a nine inch round ) and we took our own pics in the gardens. It was very special and I would do it again.

You and your future husband can plan something special for yourselves and family; a unique day that will be remembered for ever .

Come on OP!
Invite us

Our daughter and son in law got married in March in Antigua. Just the 2 of them with staff from the hotel as witnesses. It is just how they wanted it to be. Good luck with what ever you decide to do

We didn't have many people to come to our wedding, so the vicar announced it in the church notices the week before. We attended the church anyway, and the congregation were more than happy to come and fill the pews and chuck confetti at us. It meant we got lots of lovely wedding cards to put in the memory box too.

I worked for a lovely wedding venue that had various sizes of rooms, and the nicest wedding receptions were in the small room. We would set a table for 10-20 and it looked beautiful. The bride and groom would still have all the decorations that they wanted and we had every style you could imagine from a casual wedding in jeans to a full on Winter renaissance theme for about 12 people. Just because you want a small intimate wedding, doesn't mean you can't have all the trimmings you want. Anyway, think how much cheaper it will be with fewer guests! More to spend on your honeymoon.

An alternative idea is to book a table for however many in a really nice restaurant. Ask them if you can decorate the table (which most places will be quite happy with) and if they can serve your wedding cake and maybe some champagne. The restaurant I worked in (2 rosette) did this fairly often for small informal weddings.

I hope you have a lovely day, exactly as you both want it.

Oh PLEEEEEASE live near me.
I wanna come!

Your idea of being married in a church that's important to you and has connections to your family sounds perfect. If the vicar finds it hard to recruit enough locals and you feel you need some London friends you haven't met yet to attend, count me in...especially if your sheep will be there; DD2 is seven and wants to be a farmer but there's a shortage of sheep in SE London for her to role play with!

I will come. Am willing to leave DC at home if it's child free but also can give them a good hose down and bundle them into naice dresses.

I also have a good imagination and, if required, can come up with a fantastic back story of how we know each other to present to your dp's family.

See, now you've mentioned that church, it sounds like the perfect venue for you. And as others have said, if you have a church wedding, it wouldn't be weird for the local congregation to fill the venue (if that's what you want). I think that would be an absolutely lovely service.

You have to go to talk to the vicar! It's Sunday, he's working! :)

Wow thank you all so much for your advice! I'm really touched and might have had a little sniffle

I hope the people who have offered to attend are serious and don't mind a pm a bit closer to the date! you have offered now and it's too late to back out! I will bribe you with the offer of cake and booze kids welcome the more noise the merrier.

Our wedding was in 2 parts. I also suffer from social anxiety but hide it extreamly well by being too social if that even makes any sense? But it's exhausting!

DH and I are both from big families and have lots of aquatances but although we have lots of "friends" that we socialise with as part of other groups, we don't actually have that many good, close friends that we could depend upon in an emergency.

With our family politics situation, we knew we couldn't have a small, close wedding that we craved and also I didn't want to affect the social dynamics of the groups that we socialised with so we ended up going abroad with about 25 close friends/family for the ceremony and then had a ridiculous sized party back here afterwards. (Over 200 guests)

I really didn't enjoy the after party. I hated being the centre of attention, there were many people there that I hardly knew (we let our parents invite whomever they wanted, guests brought spouse/families etc) I worried all night that I didn't talk to x,y,z. Or having no idea who I was talking to but having to pretend that I did! Everyone I speak to says that it was the best wedding that they had ever been to, but I spent the whole evening worrying about every thing!

My favourite wedding was a church ceremony followed by canopies/small buffet outside the church, then they had champagne toasts and the couple cut a cake and shared it out. They participate a lot with the church community so lots of parishners were there. Later on the bridal party went out for a meal with their close family to a posh hotel where they stayed the night.

A wedding with just close family is as much one as with 100 guests.

I'm glad I had the smaller wedding ceremony as otherwise our marriage would have been completly overshadowed by the after party!

You won't regret keeping your day intimate if you are not the type of people that typically enjoy big parties anyway!

My SIL had the most beautiful wedding in a gorgeous place in Scotland. It was in a beautiful country house that also had a tiny chapel. There were only 19 of us. We all sat round one big table. The food was stunning, the speeches were personal. It was one of the loveliest weddings I have ever attended. Infact I preferred it to my own traditional wedding!

Oooooh, could this be a first AIBU wedding? Blue and white theme... Tables themed with acronyms... 'ODFOD', 'HTH' etc. Probably better than thread-themed. Not sure Great Aunt Gertie should find herself on the 'Penis beaker' table. Yes please OP! Although I have to say that small and intimate is attractive too.

I'd be more than happy to make up your numbers if you're in the SE - I'm a very low maintainence guest Just be sure to have what you and your DF want and don't get bogged down worrying what people think. The people who matter will only be pleased for you. One of the loveliest weddings I've been to was a small church wedding attended by some of the parishioners. They had a cream tea afterwards in the church hall for everyone who attended and then later a small group of family and friends went back to their house and had takeaway Thai food in the garden, under a gazebo hung with fairy lights.

We had just the two of us, and it was brilliant and we live looking at the photos. Don't feel under pressure to conform to anythimg

ah this is a lovely thread......