I just got engaged and we are currently panning our wedding which will be a year from this October. We plan to have a pretty small wedding, just close friends and close family, aiming for 25-50 people, mainly because at the time of the wedding we will have a one year old and we are young, paying for the wedding completely by ourselves, and saving up for a down payment on a house and cannot afford the catering for a big wedding. Well we are young so majority of our friends are at completely different stages in their lives and so they have no idea the details that go into planning an event so we’ve learned after having a housewarming party AND after me helping my friend who threw my babyshower get a list of the people coming, that getting people to RSVP is much more difficult than it should be and that a pretty large group of people who do, will cancel day of or day before, forget to take off work, or simply will not show even though the invitations said to RSVP by a certain date. With the housewarming party and babyshower that wasn’t a big deal, we just planned for a little over who did RSVP and made extra food and got extra favors and it was fine but just put me under so much anxiety thinking about how many people would do that for our wedding. How would i go about making it clear that we mean it when we say that we need for sure RSVPs (because I’d like an accurate head count for the caterer so we don’t overpay for no reason) without sounding like a bitch? (Also tell me if that is selfish because I have no idea and don’t wanna be ignorant, of course we’d have exceptions for things like medical issues, family emergencies etc.)

Also, I am going to have 4 bridesmaids and a maid of honor, the MOH is my best friend practically a sister and one of the bridesmaids is also my close friend. The other ones are my highschool friend, childhood best friend and my future daughters godmother (who is the long time girlfriend of my fiancé’s best friend. We aren’t super close but I like her a lot and knew they’d like to be in the wedding party together and would also like to get closer to her) we haven’t officially asked anyone but my two best friends know they will be MOH and BM and while talking about colors for dresses we talked about how FDH and I will probably not be able to pay for the wedding party’s attire and if that’s a problem or if that’s rude or anything and they both agreed that it’s fine as long as I’m not asking them to buy a several hundred dollar dress that they’ll never wear again.

What do you guys think though? Is it rude of us to ask the rest of the wedding party to pay for their attire? If they are all okay with it should I still pick out matching dresses (reasonably priced ofc) or just tell them they can get any dress of a certain color? (Probably also a long dress because it’s gonna be an outdoor wedding in the beginning of October in upstate NY)

Please please tell me if I’m being ignorant or selfish because I’ve never planned a wedding before and have only been to one and I honestly don’t know that’s why I must ask!

Also any tips for keeping things cheaper I would love!!