My [25F] fiance [28M] has so many more friends to invite to our wedding. I feel small for caring, and small for not having more friends.

I am so lucky to be marrying the man of my dreams, Rob. We have been together for 2.5 years, and he just popped the question a few months ago. He is everything I could ever want: kind, patient, smart, loving, funny, the whole laundry list. And because he's so many wonderful things, he's attracted tons of friends throughout his life that share my admiration of him.

He grew up in Rhode Island, which for those not from the USA is not far from New York City, which is where we met and live now. He's still close with nearly a dozen friends from high school and half a dozen friends from college (also in RI), not to mention the dozens of friends he has here in NYC from adulthood. Though many of them live in his hometown, he sees them frequently for trips home to his parents, meetups, or their own weddings.

As for me, not so much. I am from a small town in the South where I never really fit in. I have two or three acquaintances from high school I barely keep in touch with, and a handful of friends from college, all of whom remained in our hometown or in other southern cities. My life more or less started over when I moved to NYC and my small group of close friends (~5 people) are all I really have. Until recently, I never wanted more--they're incredible people and I'm lucky to have them. But looking at my small list of friends I want to invite to the wedding makes *me* feel small compared to Rob's big life.

Whereas he could send dozens of invites to family members, I only have my parents and two grandparents. He has dozens of friends from high school and college; I hardly have any, and those who I am close to can't finance the trip from down South for a wedding in NYC. It makes me feel like this big day, which I've been told essentially since birth is the most important in my life, will be more about Rob than it is me.

Rob, incredible and patient as he is, consoles me and tells me not to look at it this way. He says our wedding is a celebration of our lives coming together; there's no "Rob's friends" and "OP's friends," there's only "our" friends and "our family." But that feels easy for him to say, when 75% of the people there will have known him since he was a kid.

Has anyone had a similar experience? Is there a way I can reframe this to feel better? Any advice would be appreciated.

**TL;DR** incredible fiance has lived a full, incredible life, and naturally attracted lots of friends along the way. This, coupled with his big family, makes me feel bad when preparing our wedding guest list--I have a smaller, closer-knit group and a much smaller family. How do I stop feeling small, too?

Submitted May 28, 2019 at 02:25PM by cozyjournal http://bit.ly/2wpFZtc