In some ways it still pisses me off that my wife and I caved to one family that got upset that we were going to go really small for our wedding, as we didn't want to spend a lot and didn't see the point of a large wedding. We still managed to keep the cost at around $10k overall, give or take, but that's about 50 to 75 percent more than we had planned to spend when we changed our minds and wanted to go small. To be fair, we had told them the date and all that, and after further thought that same day we realized the cost was going to be much higher than we'd realized because man, you can really get swept up in excitement planning for these things.

What added insult to injury is they got upset because not only would they not be invited, but so would several other extended family members (again, simply for cost reasons, not because we didn't want them in attendance). In the end, only one member of this family was able to attend along with another relative from their same side of the family. No one else from my side of the family outside of these two individuals, my parents, my siblings, and their spouses were able to attend. I had more friends than family at my wedding.

Many of them had good reasons, time/cost (go figure) and one had surgery and was told not to fly due to increased risk of blood clots which is completely understandable, but in the end it was pretty hard to not feel at least a little angry that we could have stuck to our guns and it wouldn't have mattered much anyway, not to mention my personal bank account would have been at least $5k larger than it currently is. Were we to still have that money, we'd be about halfway to affording a house in the lower price range we're looking at with a 20% down payment.

The day itself was fine and went well, and everyone who attended was happy (or at least said they were), but all the same we could be a bit better off financially and closer to our dream of owning a home than we currently are.