Should We Have a Small Wedding?
A couple weeks ago, we wrote a post with some tips on how to handle postponing your wedding due to Coronavirus.
But what if you don’t want to wait another year to get married? Another option is to whittle your guest count way down and simply have a small, intimate wedding. Depending on how things shape up over the coming weeks and months, group sizes will likely be capped for events this summer, so having a small wedding is a viable option for couples who would rather not postpone.
As wedding photographers, we love small, intimate weddings. Colorado is a popular wedding destination and a lot of couples come here with just a few close friends and family members to tie the knot in the heart of the Rocky Mountains. Think of it as an elopement, but instead of it just being the two of you, you bring along your parents and/or siblings and/or best friend. It’s a happy medium between an elopement and a traditional wedding with lots of guests.
We’ve shot several of these intimate weddings during our 13 years as wedding photographers and they always stand out as some of our favorites.
If you can’t decide whether you’d rather postpone your wedding or have a small wedding on your originally-scheduled date, read on for some benefits of having an intimate wedding.
Intimate weddings focus on the most important people
Don’t get me wrong. Everyone on your guest list is probably important to you in some way. But if they all bring a plus-one, you’re likely going to have a few dozen people (or more) at your wedding who you’ve never met before. And the larger your guest count, the more directions your attention will be pulled throughout the course of the wedding day.
By limiting your guest list to only the most important people in your life, you’ll have more time and mental bandwidth to spend hanging out with the people you care about most.
Microweddings can throw the timeline out the window
There are a lot of moving parts in a big wedding. The venue, the wedding coordinator, the florist, the hair and makeup artist (MUA), the photographers, the DJ, the caterers – not to mention your wedding guests – all have their own goals that need to fit together like one gigantic jigsaw puzzle to make your wedding a success.
This means creating a wedding day timeline to make sure everything runs smoothly, like a well-oiled machine. This also means that sometimes you don’t have much time to relax and be present and enjoy your day the way you were hoping. Big weddings are a blast, but they can sometimes be a bit chaotic.
When you have a small wedding, there aren’t as many deadlines you need to hit, so you can sit back, take some time to breathe and really soak in the experience of your day.
Small weddings get really spectacular photos
Another added benefit of throwing the wedding timeline out the window is that you now have extra free time to take some really cool and unique wedding photos.
Most Colorado wedding venues are gorgeous, but sometimes the best photo locations require a bit of a hike or a drive. And since we typically only have around 20-30 minutes after the ceremony to shoot the couple’s portraits, we don’t always get to go to the best spots. But if you have a small wedding, you won’t need to worry about meeting a concrete deadline for arriving at your cocktail hour, grand entrance, first dance, etc.
This gives us extra time and space to capture something you’ll cherish for the rest of your lives. Will we achieve that goal in 20-30 minutes at your venue? Absolutely. But the more time, the better.
Small weddings save money.
Weddings are expensive. It’s no secret. And during the uncertain times we find ourselves in, it only makes sense to tighten the money belt a bit. Lowering your guest count is the single quickest way to save money when planning a wedding. Providing food and drinks for 200 people is a helluva lot more expensive than doing so for 10 people.
Thanks for reading! Questions for us? Feel free to reach out anytime. We’re just a text, email or phone call away. Happy wedding planning!
