10 Tips for scaling your wedding back to an intimate celebration.

Extraordinary times such as ours call for flexibility and adaptability, particularly when planning an event. Ever changing guidelines and continuous restrictions mean that right now, the only kind of wedding celebration that can be planned is a micro or smaller wedding. I’ve put together some tips on how to scale back your wedding whilst still ensuring you have a memorable celebration.

1. Take back your time

You have a wonderful opportunity to focus on making your intimate wedding uniquely yours as you have more time to work with. Wedding Planning is a huge time investment , it’s a job in itself and can be stressful if project planning and management is not your forte particularly when you are planning a wedding with large numbers. The admin that comes with guest management, RSVPs , planning seating, accommodation, transport is all vastly reduced and in some cases entirely removed as these are not necessary for smaller weddings.

2. Maximise your Budget

The other obvious pro of a smaller wedding is that you can maximise your budget , with more resources to use on fewer guests. You can invest more into the parts of the wedding that are most important to you as a couple , where your priorities lie. If you are foodies for example, consider a more elaborate multi course meal or an indulgent dessert station over standard wedding fayre.

3. Guest list

Having fewer numbers gives an opportunity to celebrate with your favourites and also an excuse to not invite the people on your list who perhaps were there to appease your parents or family. If you are having a non religious ceremony, consider that your guest list will automatically include your witnesses , your immediate family – parents /siblings who may also have partners, leaving room around the table for just your very closest pals.

4. Location, Location

Scaling back opens up the possibilities of different types of venues and more locations. Destination weddings become more attractive as again, costs are not prohibitive because of numbers. Similarly venue options such as a wedding at home, glamping, private dining spaces in restaurants, boat hire, boutique hotel spaces and other non traditional ‘wedding venues’ are options because they compliment the smaller size of wedding.

5. Guest experience

You get more quality time to spend with each guest at an intimate wedding and in turn guests have fewer people to socialise with and can get to know each better too. You could tailor welcome gifts for each individual guest for a destination wedding, giving meaningful

6. Styling

Personalisation at every step becomes easier with an intimate wedding. You can actually achieve the tablescape you’ve been curating from the pins you’ve saved on Pinterest and ideas you’ve gathered on Instagram. You can really splurge on hiring beautiful tableware as you’re not constrained by budget in the same way as you would trying to replicate this for 100 guests.

7. The seating plan

You can play around with table seating to add to the guest experience ensuring guests get to know each other better . Seating people on a round at the ceremony ensures everyone gets a great view is a popular trend right now as well as opting for alternating pews and chairs, even lounge furniture over traditional wedding ceremony seating.

8. Entertainment

Whilst a 10 piece show band is not the best choice for a small wedding or small wedding venue, there is scope to have a variety of entertainment options. A suggestion would be to have an acoustic set or acoustic performers which always lend themselves to more intimate settings and then you could play your own playlist for the party to ensure you get exactly the music you want to cut a rug to .

9. Planning events around the wedding

Intimate weddings give the possibility of extending celebrations beyond the traditional wedding day to other events like a welcome dinner or hosting a brunch the next day. As “buddymoons” become more popular, it’s easier and more desirable to plan post wedding trips and activities with your group of guests after the wedding.

10. Things you can possibly skip

Ditch the traditional format entirely. Change up the timelines of when you do speeches or how you serve food as you won’t be constrained by the format of a bigger event and there isn’t a need for more rigid timings.