I Don’t Regret My 25-Person Wedding

Illustration: Kimberly Elliott

When my boyfriend and I decided to get married, it was largely practical: We wanted our commitment to each other to be recognized by the forces of government to be sure that, in an emergency, we would be the ones to decide what happened to our bodies, our belongings, and our lives. We considered eloping until my soon-to-be mother-in-law called us up and, with some otherworldly intuition, asked, “You wouldn’t get married without me would you?” Apparently we would not. Invite one mother and you’d better invite the other. Once mothers were involved, it was hard to leave out the dads, the siblings, and everyone else. This is typical, I found. I talked to several other couples who had small weddings like I did — people who kept their lists under 25. For many of them, it was those discussions surrounding the guest list that pushed them into having that small wedding in the first place. “If we invited some people, then we had to invite everybody, then it would have become a 300 or 400 person event,” says John Chibnall who eloped with his husband, Raymond Ngu, one Wednesday afternoon in a park near their home in Washington, D.C. “We told our close friends and family that we were going to get married and that it would happen some time soon. But we didn’t tell anyone the actual date until after it happened,” says Ngu. “Then we sent them a picture and said, ‘Oh, it happened.’”

Since we’d already promised not to elope, my boyfriend and I then had to figure out how to get married. Easier said than done. We’d listened to our parents criticize our friends and siblings for their table decorations, their catering choices, and their failure to include a receiving line at their weddings. We decided that the only way to maintain control was to pay for our wedding ourselves, make all the decisions, and ask for no input. We thought about a picnic in Golden Gate Park, close to where we lived, but worried about asking our friends — most of whom are artists, teachers, and grad students — to bear the cost of attending a wedding in one of the nation’s most expensive cities. And besides — where would people go to the bathroom? I couldn’t imagine my husband’s grandmother squatting in a Parks Department stall.

Eventually, we decided that to keep costs down and our sanity intact, we would include immediate family only. It wasn’t exactly equal. I have a small nuclear family and an enormous extended family. My boyfriend has enough full, half, and step- siblings to field a basketball team but few other close relatives. The result was that I excluded a huge number of people while he had all but one uncle, aunt, and set of cousins in attendance. We were both sad not to have our closest friends there and promised to visit and celebrate together later in the year. But we had to draw a line somewhere, and this was it.

We made an appointment at City Hall for a day in May, found a restaurant we loved for dinner afterward and a favorite dim sum spot for brunch the next day. I bought a red dress that made me feel sexy, and my husband found a handsome new suit. Our friends all understood. Our families had questions. Could just that one uncle slip in? (No — one uncle would mean all uncles.) What about a friend who happened to be in town that day? (No — one friend meant ten friends!) Then there was the logistical drama. San Francisco City Hall allows only groups of ten for weddings, so we decided our siblings should skip the ceremony and just meet us at the restaurant. When I told my sister, she yelled at me and we both cried.

Some families accept the small wedding more readily. Katrina McEntee was in the middle of organizing a 250-person wedding and arguing with her mother about where to have it when she stumbled across an Instagram post from a wedding photographer in Scotland. She was smitten. She and her fiancé scrapped their original plans and booked a date to elope in Scotland based on the photographer’s schedule. “But I couldn’t keep my family away,” says McEntee. The couple ended up going with ten friends and family members. McEntee’s mom handled all the hotel and dinner reservations. Her sisters helped decorate the table, and her dad made gifts out of sea glass for everyone. Though her grandmother was upset not to be included in the day, they brought her handmade photo albums when they got home, and told her the story of the wedding. “She was happy that we did what we wanted to do,” she said. And everyone who did go on the trip became unusually close: “Now my mom and dad regularly visit with my husband’s best friend and his wife. I like to think that the wedding kind of shaped our whole relationship.” Galen Bunting, who considers himself an introvert, felt the same way. His small wedding allowed everyone involved to actually talk; it also allowed him and his partner to create a personalized experience for each of their guests. “We did something different for each person’s invitation,” he says. “My partner’s aunt really loves to travel, so we grabbed a book about travel for her. That ended up acting as kind of a conversation point when we went to dinner afterward. Everyone was able to get to know each other through these items we’d chosen.” People from different parts of their lives met and became friends because of the wedding and have kept talking and texting with each other since.

On the flip side, there’s a real risk that those who aren’t invited will hold on to hostility. Erin Reese had a few angry friends who were hurt they didn’t get invited to her wedding. “They were really upset,” she says. “I felt badly then, and I still feel badly about that,” Reese says. She explained to them that the wedding was mostly about having her and her fiancé’s aging parents meet and apologized. Still, tensions lingered. They did among my family too. By the time my wedding day arrived, it felt like everyone was just a little bit pissed. My sister was still mad that we had invited her to a wedding and then didn’t want her to come to the actual marriage part. My mother-in-law was upset that we hadn’t planned a dinner for all 23 attendees every single night they would be in town. My mom was still trying to sneak in a family friend or two and was baffled every time I got irritated when she mentioned this. Still, they all showed up. We repeated our vows after a justice of the peace named Arnold with our families, including my sister, standing by our sides. We took pictures, ate tacos, and woke up the next morning awkwardly rolling the words husband and wife around in our mouths like foreign words we could not pronounce.

Later that summer, each set of parents threw their own “family gathering” with the various uncles and cousins and friends who weren’t invited to the wedding, and for years afterward our parents told us we had been very difficult. Maybe we had. Maybe we should have invited every distant cousin and their girlfriend. Maybe we should have consulted our mothers about dresses and shoes and table settings so they could feel included in the process. Maybe we should have nixed our families and included only our friends, who showered us with gifts and notes and love and who instantly understood and supported our decision. But we didn’t regret it. Not everyone felt it was so straightforward an emotional experience. “Maybe in retrospect having a couple more friends there during the ceremony would have been nice,” Katelyn Cumins, who got married in a bed-and-breakfast with 13 people total, told me. “Just because the vows are just so beautiful. When I was there, I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, I wish more of our friends and family could be here for this part because this is just such a beautiful moment.’ Still, I think we would do it the same way if we did it over.”