Not many friends- embarrassed/reluctant to organise my wedding

[Duetowed22]

I have been engaged for a couple of years. Had a baby after getting engaged and then with the obvious current situation we decided to wait longer. To be honest, I felt comfortable putting it off repeatedly as I don't have many friends (there are maybe one or two people I am close enough with, and they don't actually even know each other). I am embarrassed about this and I think this is the main reason I have put off my wedding for so long.

Now we are looking at making lists for inviting people, my partner has a good few mates, lots of them in couples. I was close to tears earlier thinking about how few people I would be actually writing down. Felt really sad, actually.

I dont have a "bride tribe", or a list of people waiting to be my bridesmaids (obviously - need plenty of mates for that), but I have my good friend and my cousin who I would definitely like to be beside me on the day.

Is this in any way normal? Does anyone have any advice for not feeling so down about this?

We only had 6 from my side- married dh home country. We just filled from the front

Small weddings are great! Everyone gets to actually talk to each other and spend proper time with the bride and groom so they feel part of the specialness of the day, instead of just spectators.

As far as I can tell, 'bride tribes' and big hen parties etc are not actually very much fun and can just be an expensive hassle... i wouldn't know though I've only been invited to one...

Hey, me too. No girlfriend "tribe" to speak of, have a few friends but often I feel like the "background" friend, ie less of a priority to others than they are to me. I think like others have suggested, go for a small, intimate wedding. It will be much nicer (and cheaper!) than a large wedding with lots of people you don't know or care about, just there to make up the numbers.

We will be getting married with somewhere between 20-30 guests all in - family and friends on both sides.

Please don’t worry about what is acceptable - do what you feel comfortable with. And don’t be embarrassed of who you are/how you are. I will never be someone who has millions of friends and a massive Instagram-worthy hen do, but I don’t want that! I have a very few, very good friends, and I’m happy with that.

OP I voted YABU - but its a kind YABU.

Small intimate weddings are lush and the way forward! They mean so much more to the people there and its a much more personal event

PS and yes smaller wedding means cheaper and time to actually talk to people!

The best weddings always reflect the couple.

There are no “rules” with weddings. I suggest you get off bridal websites and Pinterest/Instagram.

Work out what matters to the two of you. An intimate wedding with your nearest and dearest sounds absolutely lovely.

Hey OP, my wedding was about 65% my husbands friends and fam and 35% mine (and that’s generous) it was totally fine. Don’t be embarrassed just remember it’s quality not quantity

In a traditional wedding a groomsman would ask every guest "bride or groom?" upon entry, so they could be directed to the correct side of the aisle. Someone will correct me if I'm wrong but the bride's family is usually seated on the left and the groom's on the right and then friends behind that. However, you absolutely don't need to follow this tradition! You can have someone at the ceremony venue to say please sit where you like.

The same with a top table. You could have a sweetheart table ie just the two of you so no need for formalities that would highlight how few people you have there just knowing you.

All weddings are different. We didn't have hen/stag in any form or an evening do.
We did arrange a meal a while before so a few people who didn't know each other could meet.
Was mostly my family and family friends as DH isn't a people person.

A couple of nice ideas I have come across are ceremony then off to the pub or restaurant (so no formal seated do). Or ceremony followed by afternoon tea and everyone gone by 5. Or ceremony followed by picnic/BBQ in the park.
Be clear with your guests what they are doing so they can eat/plan appropriately and wear the right clothes.
Have a lovely day when it comes.

A wedding is just a day - in fact, the ceremony is just an hour or less, and the celebration part can be as small and intimate as you like, or as big as you want. There’s no rule that says you need bridesmaids, or any of that.

Plan what you are comfortable with. Perhaps you’d like a very small wedding then a bigger party or gathering in a pub or something which feels like less pressure at a later date?

There were 25 people at my wedding, two couple that were dh’s friends and who I had become friendly with, the rest was family. I don’t have any friends so only had family on my side. It was still lovely! We didn’t have a big evening do though, just married in the late morning then to a hotel restaurant for lunch then that was it.

@Duetowed22 We didn’t have sides. DH & I have lots of mutual friends, then he had family. I didn’t have family there. I did have my best friend as maid of honour; and a bridesmaid, although I didn’t really want to, and I wish now that I hadn’t! Best friend stopped talking to me a few weeks after the wedding and is in most of the photos.

I had a wonderful day though, I wouldn’t change it for the world.

I had this problem and ended up just having parents and siblings. It was absolutely amazing.

Neither of us had many friends to invite. I definitely didn’t have a hen doo or “squad”. I find it a bit cringe and when I have been involved in others, they were not quite as fun as they sound.

I did see a wedding as joining 2 families and a sacrament and a legal decision. So any friends coming we’re just to be part of the day and not “key” to the day iyswim. So this took the pressure off a bit, if none came we would still have fulfilled the purpose of the day. Not sure if that helps!

I think there is an awful lot of pressure to have an amazing day, looking back after 15 happy years, the day really wasn’t as important as it seemed. My relationship though, every day, is very important. So I wish you a happy marriage!

Don’t feel down; why don’t you consider a small wedding for just immediate family? Then you could maybe have a disco etc in the evening for friends and colleagues- then the numbers wouldn’t really be obvious.

Very few people still have groom’s guests on one side of the aisle and bride’s guests on the other nowadays, so that shouldn’t be noticeable either.

I went to a wedding years ago where the groom was from the US; hardly any of his friends or family could come, but nobody commented on it. With Covid weddings are still very much up in the air, so honestly nobody will mind if it looks like you don’t have lots of people there.

It sounds like you do have a good friend and a cousin, which is lovely - so have them there with you- and that’s more than enough. Them with your DC and immediate family is plenty. Please don’t let this fear put you off arranging your wedding. I hope you have a lovely day.

I'm the same and currently planning a wedding. We are sticking to family only (easy to say as we have enough for an 80 pax wedding), I may invite one of my handful of friends but they would be VIP non family , DS as MOH, older nice and chief bridesmaid and 2 cousins kids as flower girls.

I do feel sad that my wedding won't be like others having huge bridal parties etc but it is what it is. I'm just focusing on my wedding being amazing (which it will be)

We decided against a big wedding for different reasons (complicated family situation) and also limited funds and a baby. We booked a Christening for our baby, invited our closest family and friends to that and then had the minister marry us as a happy follow on at the same time. We then had coffee and wedding/ Christening cake at the Church and booked somewhere lovely for lunch for a family and Godparent celebration. It wasn’t conventional but it was a really special delay without us feeling on show. Good luck with it. I expect your friend base will grow with your child when things open up properly.

Why don’t you just have a small family only wedding? When I married my DH if was close family only. We didn’t want a massive do, we just wanted to get married. We did feel out mums would hate to miss out. I would have hated being the centre of attention with loads of people watching. We had a lovely day, must have been less than 30 people. We hired the function room of a pub for dinner and drinks.

My sister in law, had a big wedding and has people in her photos she isn’t friends with anymore. Not saying it wasn’t lovely too! Just go with a small wedding with the people who are important.

@Duetowed22 We have the same problem, I have a couple of friends my DP has many people he talks to but none that he socialises with, and to make it worse the only family we would want to invite (apart from our DC) would be my DF as he would be the only one happy for us!! We're looking at doing a 2+6 wedding ( Bride, groom max 6 guests)

Dh and I had small wedding partially for this reason - immediate family only which covered my aunts and uncles and cousins as my family is small and dhs is big so we ended up with about 12 from each side.

It was lovely and chilled tbh.

We also got married where I was bought up so whilst I had mates mostly from work, they weren't good enough friends to pay out to travel/stay in hotel etc. Also dhs friends from childhood/teens were a bunch of thugs tbh and it would have been a very different type of do!

I'm not super sociable and have a handful of people I'd call really good friends - my DH is the same.

Yet when we started making a list of wedding invitations it really grew. In addition to current friends there was extended family on both sides, work colleagues and also people I'd been close to from as far back as school but had lost touch with but thought it would be lovely to celebrate with them.

It was quite nerve-wracking waiting for the RSVPs but almost all of them came. I was really chuffed afterwards too when two unconnected people, who were seasoned wedding goers, said ours was one of the best weddings they'd been to. They both said it was mainly because it was the right 'scale' as everyone felt that it meant a lot to us that they were there.

Good luck - I'm sure yours will be lovely!!

@Saskatcha

We decided against a big wedding for different reasons (complicated family situation) and also limited funds and a baby. We booked a Christening for our baby, invited our closest family and friends to that and then had the minister marry us as a happy follow on at the same time. We then had coffee and wedding/ Christening cake at the Church and booked somewhere lovely for lunch for a family and Godparent celebration. It wasn’t conventional but it was a really special delay without us feeling on show. Good luck with it. I expect your friend base will grow with your child when things open up properly.

Ah, this is lovely.

I had a similar situation where Dh had a huge number of friends plus a massive family. I had a few close friends and a smaller family, i said I didn’t feel comfortable having a huge wedding and in the end we had 30 people at a registry office. Got married at 11, all had lunch and a bit of a dance at a local hotel then dh and I left at about 5 for our honeymoon.

You have to feel comfortable with your day.