Your wedding party and a small country’s GDP

I constantly hear different opinions on wedding parties, specifically on the size of them and who’s “required” to be in the wedding, and so on. While I don’t think there’s a hard and fast rule to follow when it comes to this friend or that one, that brother or sister, or all-or-nothing groups of friends, this is probably one of the more challenging things to do, sans maybe culling the guest list down to make the venue - and your budget - work for you.

This post from Mrs. Tulip on Weddingbee talks about the size of her wedding overall, and how the wedding party in the photo she included being “half the size of her entire wedding,” and I’m sure she’s not the only one thinking that way, especially in a time that appears to be getting rough, economically, for a lot of Americans.

I recently heard a comment from a guy I know who has a very large wedding party - on both sides - purely because “she’s got a big family.” Soooo, everyone needs to be IN the wedding? Costs aside, doesn’t that mean that every other person in that family is now probably going to have the ENTIRE family in their wedding, each and every time there’s another set of nuptials? Are they all going to enjoy one another’s company and events the same if they keep doing it over and over again? I guess it’s not for me to say, but I think that feels more like people are having people in their wedding for the sake of doing so, rather than because they’ve chosen a few special friends and relatives to be a part of the wedding party.

Meg at A Practical Wedding takes this conversation a step further, pointing out that having a wedding party doesn’t mean you have to go all over the planet buying ridiculous gifts for them. She suggests that doing helpful things such as paying for tuxedos or dresses, travel to a bachelor/bachelorette event, and other things can be just as meaningful, especially if you have people in your wedding party who are not from “in town.”