Advantages and Disadvantages of a Big Wedding

Big Wedding

When you’re planning your wedding, one of the first questions you’ll ask yourself – which has an enormous impact on everything from your wedding budget to your choice of wedding venue – is “How big do we want the wedding to be?” For every bride and groom, the issue of a wedding’s size is very subjective – you might think a 150 guest wedding is big, or a 400+ guest wedding is your definition of a big wedding. The number you come up with will form many of your wedding decisions, and factor into your wedding’s style.

To help you form your personalized wedding plan, we offer the top Advantages and Disadvantages of a Big Wedding, which we suggest you discuss with each other and with your families, if they’ll be involved in planning and paying for your wedding. There’s a lot to consider.

Advantages of a Big Wedding

• If you invite all of your relatives, close friends near and far, your colleagues and bosses, neighbors, and other favorite people to your wedding, you get to not only share your Big Day with everyone you love, you get to see everyone you love. Which might not happen very often, given that we’re a more global society with friends and family living in so many different states and countries. A wedding is a happy occasion that gathers everyone together once every few years, and may be the only time you’ll be able to gather all of your friends in one place at one time. That alone is a top reason why big weddings are so popular now: it’s about quality time with the people you adore.
• You get to hold your wedding in a big, fabulous wedding venue, with multiple celebration spaces such as an outdoor wedding venue, with an elegant indoor banquet hall, and other celebration spaces for your cocktail party, and perhaps even your after-party. The top New Jersey banquet halls and wedding venues offer multiple settings for larger weddings’ different stages, so that guests can proceed from one beautiful area to another as your entire celebration unfolds in a romantic wedding setting.
• You have the opportunity to go grander with your wedding décor in your wedding ballroom, such as featuring the top wedding trend of showcasing different floral centerpieces on each table. Your centerpiece designs can be tall and ornate, as befitting a grander wedding venue with high ceilings and other luxury architectural features, and in larger number make more of a visual impact, creating your dream wedding scene.
• You get to offer a larger variety of menu items in your wedding catering list, with a large number of cocktail party stations, sit-down dinner menu choices and other banquet hall catering options.
• You can offer an enormous, impressive dessert hour for your larger number of guests to enjoy.
• Not only do the wedding catering options get to be more plentiful and diverse, the photographs of your lavish food displays will be far more jaw-dropping as part of your wedding photograph albums and wedding video.
• A larger wedding guest list means a larger number of hotel rooms booked in your block, which often creates an opportunity for you to get your honeymoon suite for free. Many of the top hotels surrounding our beautiful northern New Jersey wedding venues offer such perks to our local brides and grooms, who enjoy knowing their guests are staying in style, and that they get to spend their wedding night in a luxury suite.
• You get to dance and take photos with a larger number of your close friends and family during your wedding celebration. With your entire circle of college friends in attendance, that creates a fabulous opportunity for group photos and wedding photo booth fun.
• You get to keep the treasured family tradition of having a large or cultural wedding going, rather than being the first in the family to bypass the important family ritual of big family weddings.
• You have wonderful opportunities to plan pre-wedding parties, brunches or other events with your circle of friends, giving you extra quality time with friends who have come into town for your wedding day.
• Your big wedding may have so many unique décor elements, or may take place in a unique wedding venue, that your wedding may be featured in bridal magazines, or on top wedding blogs.
• More guests = more gifts. It may sound crass to say so, but that’s the reality and a factor in some wedding couples’ choice to have a big wedding.

Disadvantages of a Big Wedding

• A big wedding is likely going to be expensive, given the higher costs for a larger number of wedding invitations, wedding catering costs per-person, wedding favors, and more.
• A larger wedding often takes extra work on a larger number of details, which can cause wedding stress. Many of our New Jersey wedding couples and New York City wedding couples solve this problem, though, by hiring top NJ wedding coordinators to help them handle and organize the larger workload. Our wedding catering teams can also help streamline your wedding plans, so consider this particular disadvantage to be one that can be managed quite easily.
• It can be difficult to spend quality time with all of your wedding guests at a big wedding. After all, you may only get a few seconds with each as you visit from table to table in your wedding banquet hall  or outdoor wedding venue during the reception. To solve this problem, you may wish to plan pre-wedding parties or events with your closest friends and family members who have come in from out of town, such as at top NJ restaurants or at the guests’ hotel. Or, plan an after-party just for your best friends, to give you that quality time you desire.
• Some sites can’t handle extra-large wedding guest lists, such as those in the 300+ range, so your search for the best wedding venues has to include checking that the site allows your particular big wedding size.
• If you don’t choose a large enough wedding venue, your guests may be crowded at their tables, and the dance floor may not be large enough to give everyone ideal dancing space. Servers, too, need to be able to pass through your tables at your elegant wedding venue, so be sure to work with the wedding and event planners at your location to create a functional table layout plan.
• DIY wedding projects that you take on to personalize your wedding, and save on your wedding budget, will be much larger in scope, take more time, and take a bit more expense.
• With a larger number of guests on your list, you may receive a larger number of special requests from guests, such as special dietary items on your wedding catering menu, and requests to allow children to attend your wedding.
• When guests need to spend money on their travel and lodging to attend your big day, they might choose to give you a smaller wedding gift check, for financial reasons.
• If you need parents to help pay for a larger wedding, you’ll likely need to let them have some say in some of the wedding details.

Use our list as you consider if a big wedding offers you the dream wedding and the experience you’d like to have. Circle the topics that resonate with you, and print out this post to write down your additional pros and cons as you discuss your perfect wedding style.