To cancel my wedding?

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Looking for some advice… my fiance and I are seriously considering cancelling our wedding booked for next year, for something more intimate. We recently had our 2nd child and are having to move house unexpectedly due to various circumstances. Obviously our finances are now changing and although we could still afford the wedding, I’m just getting a bit disillusioned with spending so much on one day. Additionally, some of our family members that we would have invited to the wedding haven’t even sent a message of congratulations after the birth of our baby, so I’m not sure I want to spend over 120 per head on them 🫠
I still want to have a wedding celebration but maybe more of an intimate ceremony and a “Happily ever after party“ vibe for afterwards.

Has anyone else cancelled their wedding in favour of a more intimate ceremony and party after? If so, what were the pros and cons to this?
Thank you in advance for any responses ❤️

No experience but sounds like a good idea to me!

Congrats on your new baby ❤️

I've cancelled mine. Feel freed! We will elope at some point when my dress is ready, most people are twats and haven't bothered with us, so don't want to spend money we don't have to lavish people with nice food and entertainment when I would rather do it alone x

Honestly this is how we felt too. We’ve been guests at weddings of extended family members and I feel obligated to invite them to ours in return. But really we don’t speak to them very often if ever. And now that quite a few haven’t bothered to message about new DS it’s made the niggling feeling I had even stronger that we don’t want the big wedding that we thought we did!

I actually do have my dress already and love it so I’d wear it to whatever celebration we end up having.

Ive not cancelled a big wedding but I have had a small intimate wedding and it was a wonderful happy occasion.

I think for all the reasons you mention you should have an intimate wedding with you, your future H and the people who really matter in your lives.

And congratulations on the new addition to your special family.

Small celebration, spend the money on your home/child.

Much more sensible than forking out for a 'big day'.

YANBU. We had a small wedding, in-laws weren’t happy about that but we stood firm. We paid, kept it down to what we could afford.

Don’t spend more than you and your DP can comfortably afford.

We went abroad and got married with 50 of our nearest and dearest (all willing guests before I get a public bashing for a ‘destination wedding!’) It was absolutely perfect, married at 7pm and had a beach bbq watching the sunset.

Personally I’ve never seen the appeal of getting married with distant aunties, uncles and cousins you don’t know from Adam.

I’d vote cancel and make true memories with the people that really matter!

Have the best day whatever you decide!

Absolutely, do it!!! How much would you lose in deposits?

Congratulations on your new baby. 🎉

A small, stress free wedding with the people who really care about you and who are important to you sounds perfect.

Don't invite extended family out of a misplaced sense of obligation.

Do it! Theres no obligation to have a big wedding.

The only concern is whether people have already spent out on accomadation to come to your wedding. However, if your wedding is next year, then that’s unlikely.

We went to Gretna Green, had about 15 guests and it was the most magical day ever. We did a photoshoot in the Scottish countryside and it was beautiful. I loved our intimate wedding!

Once you start having children, I can’t imagine spending money on a big wedding. It’s the kind of thing you can do when you have no other responsibilities.

I'm very fond of both my family and friends, but we got married with two witnesses and didn't tell anyone for years, because it wasn't a big deal to us, and neither of us particularly wanted other people making a big deal of it, or to organise some giant party. (We both have big families, and all live overseas in different countries, so even inviting only our parents and siblings would already have been a sizeable hooha.)

You don't need to justify not wanting a big wedding.

We cancelled our wedding and went to the registry office with 2 witnesses. Cost us less than £200 excluding the cost of rings and it was just so lovely, just about us. We obviously lost a few deposits from cancelling but for us it was so worth it. Whatever you decide will be right for you!

I love 6 miles from Gretna Green, we got married there and then went to a lovely pub for a meal. 12 people including us. It was fabulous.

Sounds lovely to me, save the money to go on a family holiday or do work on your house

With the price of weddings these days, you need to really, really want it to justify the cost. If you're not fussed then it's a waste of money really.

You should do what feels right for the two of you. I’m sure everyone will understand what with the new baby, new house and everything else.

UNLESS you’re already at the stage where people have booked trains, planes, hotels etc and would lose money, then you might need to at least hold some kind of gathering for them. But I’m guessing you’re not at that stage otherwise you’d be losing a lot of money yourself.

Save the money ,you'll still be married however much it costs
my DD is on about a registry do , with the kids and 2 witnesses while they are on holiday. It’s their choice as it is yours . do what suits you both

We’ve booked a package wedding which includes food, drink, DJ, cake and lots of other things. We decided to wait until after baby arrived to book anything else so we would lose £1500 on the deposit for the venue/package. Would definitely rather cancel now than start booking photographer etc and then decide to cancel later

Go for it!

Agree that pre-arranged travel/accommodation would be the only potential complication but it would hopefully be refundable this far in advance. And if not, offering to cover or contribute towards the costs would be a whole lot cheaper than the cost of the big wedding anyway!

Wishing you a beautiful day, and congratulations on the new baby 💖

No one has booked accommodation yet (not that I know of anyway!!) and we hadn’t sent out the proper invitations yet so no flights etc booked either. I think the only thing would be comments from a few people but I don’t really care about that 😂

I wish I'd cancelled mine. So many things went wrong and I felt forced into some decisions I wasn't happy with just to keep costs down. I would've had a much nicer time for a lot less money if I'd eloped and had a lovely holiday, then had a party or a meal on our return.
I still have fond memories of the day, but looking back on it, it wasn't for us or about us at all.

We had to do this during COVID - our 300 person wedding became a 25 person celebration. Honestly my happiest day, hands down. We still did the fancy dressing up part, had a ceremony with a brilliant celebrant, a whiskey cocktail bar, a photographer, and a 3 course sit down dinner with live music. That was still a fraction of the price of our previously planned celebration. We got to speak to everyone who came, made the best memories, and collapsed into bed with wedding cake by 12 - bliss for me.