We were not surprised when our daughter announced her engagement this past spring. She and her fianc\u00e9 had been together for two and a half years by then, maintaining their intercontinental relationship as they traveled back and forth between his home in England and hers here in the U.S. while they finished their degrees. By then, he had been out of school and working a year, and she would have just one year left until she finished her Master\u2019s. They decided they would marry the following June.<\/p>\n
The next thing they told us is that they wanted a very small wedding. They imagined a Bed and Breakfast where they could get married in a pretty garden with a simple meal afterwards, and invite only the closest of family members and friends to stay over in the guest rooms at the B&B that night.<\/p>\n
We agreed with the small wedding concept. For one thing, weddings are a fortune, and right now, as we plan for this small wedding, we are also footing our younger daughter\u2019s college tuition, room and board, and next year, her study abroad semester, all of which we just finished paying for with the daughter who\u00a0 is now getting married.<\/p>\n
We also don\u2019t like the feel of a big wedding as much as a small one.\u00a0 Our own wedding had been 110 people, which many people would still consider \u201csmall.\u201d I wished I hadn\u2019t agreed to it even now, 27 years later. It had felt big. The room had been filled with people who barely knew me and my new husband at all \u2013 there were distant relatives, my parents\u2019 friends.<\/p>\n
My daughter has made it clear this wasn\u2019t how she wanted it to be. I totally agree with her. Each person, we feel, should have touched or loved my daughter or her soon-to-be husband in some way over the years. This easily eliminates dozens of guests \u2013 people we could invite \u2013 my parents\u2019 friends, my husband\u2019s business colleagues, people we know from the past who would surely be happy to come, but whom maybe now we don\u2019t see much or, frankly, at all.<\/p>\n
Within weeks of the engagement, the wedding planning began. My daughter and her fianc\u00e9 did find a beautiful Bed and Breakfast where we will hold the wedding on a (hopefully sunny) Sunday afternoon under a gazebo next June, in a garden bursting with summertime flowers and a koi pond to charm our guests.\u00a0 We\u2019ll be able to spend quality time with those we\u2019ve invited, instead of rushing past one to see the next. We won\u2019t worry about impressing anyone because we don\u2019t need to impress our closest friends and family.\u00a0 We\u2019re not concerned that the cocktail hour won\u2019t be a full dinner itself, leaving guests not even hungry for the main meal, or that the wedding cake is not going to be three or four tiers. (Just two, thanks.)<\/p>\n
We don\u2019t need to worry about all of the bridesmaids and groomsmen getting ready at the same time and complaining about the dress or the suit or the costs of being a member of a bridal party. There are just three attendants \u2013 the bride\u2019s sister, who will be her maid of honor, her future sister-in-law as bridesmaid, and the groom\u2019s brother will serve as best man.<\/p>\n
We\u2019re not doing a bridal shower \u2013 not my daughter\u2019s thing. We did have a small engagement party at our house recently so our friends could meet our soon-to-be-son-in-law. It was just thirty people and when we looked around at our smiling guests, we realized nearly the entire wedding guest list was there \u2013 the wedding guest list is about fifty. This is up from the thirty to thirty five my daughter had originally hoped for, but even we couldn\u2019t manage to get it down that small!<\/p>\n
It will be small but elegant and beautiful, and we feel great about doing it this way. There\u2019s nothing wrong with a small wedding. In fact, I think there\u2019s everything right with it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
We were not surprised when our daughter announced her engagement this past spring. She and her fianc\u00e9 had been together for two and a half years by then, maintaining their intercontinental relationship as they traveled back and forth between his home in England and hers here in the U.S. while they finished their degrees. By<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":133491,"featured_media":38621,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_cloudinary_featured_overwrite":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-58646","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-parenting"],"yoast_head":"\n