I'm starting to get depressed at my lack of friends (again).

[Fressia123]

I've never been able to make any local friends. I've lived here for almost 6 years and apart from my congregation, well I have no friends.

I was getting all excited about our wedding (it's next year) but the sticking point is that we have no one to invite (apart from our congregation).

I want a traditional wedding, but it's true we can't plan much based on people we haven't seen for years and that God knows of they'll travel overseas / cross country to come to our wedding. I know my partner is trying not to be a downer but I just genuinely cannot see how I can have what I'd like but knowing that we might end up paying for no shows or that we have to just commit to a fairly small thing with no friends.

How lovely to have your congregation there though? After lockdown you may very well make friends. Next year is a a good time off. Once we are out of Covid, join other groups, get to know your local neighbours and build from there. You have each other, which is lovely and your congregation. Celebrate that.

Better to have a small wedding with guests that genuinely care about you than inviting loads to make numbers.

That side of things is lovely, but there's other things that we'll, given the audience, if have to give it a miss. I don't see 70 year olds dancing to our music taste for example. We do have enough distant acquaintances to invite for the evening event (would they come, what if they don't? ) . Which I guess in that way the villas hall would make some sense but I'm not completely sold on it.

Small and intimate can be lovely for a wedding. Evening event above a pub, rather than village hall?

What is it do you think that you want friends “for”? It’s not necessarily an easy or straightforward question .............

I would just go for a lovely small wedding. I know that isn't what you've got your heart set on, but if a big wedding isn't achievable then you might have to make peace with that.

It would be quite hard to make a tonne of friends over the next year, and a difficult time to be sure if family/friends from overseas would be able to make it.

If you think it might be a bit awkward with your style of music with the oldies, could you just have a nice meal after the wedding instead? I went to one fairly small wedding where we all had a really nice dinner after and everyone had a few drinks and had a laugh and it was great.

It must be really hard if you had your heart set on a big, traditional wedding but it would still be an amazing day and you could save loads of money with less people there!

Sometimes it's not you, some areas especially rural ones but also some snobbier areas, they are just not welcome to people that come from other places. It's sad as some of these areas can be lovely but it's hard to make friends because everyone has their own sets of people.

It's a religious wedding, so we need to fit a chuppah (as pictured) so pub is obviously not the best choice.

My DM just called him a realist and that I should follow my DPs advice, ie - we need a smallish venue and not plan on having lots of guests.

Restaurant, small hotel?

Sorry forgot to attach photo!

Hotel is right now my ideal option. Or something like a air BNB that does weddings. There's plenty of options where we live (I think!)

Probably best to start with a smallish venue search and then think about the budget (I was advised to think of budget first, but I think that's secondary in our case).

What’s the point of having a big wedding with people you hardly know. We did that and people dropped out night before. With hindsight I wish I’d gone to a beautiful luxury hotel and done it just us. We just don’t have a big friendship group. I now look at my wedding photos and I’m only in touch with one person from my photos! What a waste of money.

Thank you Chiccie. At heart I'm a party person, and that's what I'm missing (I think). We also thought of just organising a piss-up but then more options opened to us.

If you haven't been successful in making local friends, can you make non-local friends? that is what I did. I couldn't break into the established friendship groups in my local area when I moved her - so I gave up and made non-local friends. Are you near a town or city and after lockdown could start to go to things there - Meetup is great for finding groups of people with similar interests to you.

We live in the "city" but we moved here just before lockdown. We've always hoped this will help (especially as we have a baby) but the COVID happened.