Non traditional wedding advice!

Welcome and congrats! As far as it goes it's up to you it's your day! I also come from a very big family but I want a small intimate wedding (25-30) and we are doing a DW inside of a cabin!

My aunt and uncle used someone's house (im not sure if it was a friend, or if they rented it?) As their venue. They had a very simple ceremony and reception...married in the living room and everyone just hung out after for food and drinks.

They had someone cater the wedding at the house, more appetizer type stuff, very casual.

I also had a friend recently who just rented out the event space in a restaurant and had his entire wedding there...my FH officiated for them. They had a buffet dinner. It had all the elements of a more traditional wedding but more casual.

Thank you! These are both great ideas! For something as simple as a restaurant or a cabin/ house rental, how did they decorate? What kinds of things should be included? I definitely want a wedding cake and champagne for toasts. Did they have tables set up for home wedding? And for the restaurant did they have center pieces?

#futuremrs.kort - if you don't mind me asking, how will you set up your ceremony( will there be an Aisle, seating, etc?)and how do you plan on decorating for such a small crowd. The details of putting something like this together sort of scare me because I'd be decorating it on my wedding day or the day before and then tearing it down afterwards. Is this your plan too?

I read your post and it felt like I wrote it! I can 100% relate to you.

My fiancé and I were originally planning for a crazy ass huge wedding but after the numbers kept climbing up, we were both like "Nah.. This much for just one day?!" So we ditched that plan.

We didn't want a City Hall wedding because, like you, we also wanted it to feel like it's our special day.

So, I actually inquired our dream venue about rates for small ceremonies and luckily, it worked out.

We will get married on December 23 at our dream venue with 30 guests. Following our ceremony, we are celebrating at a super nice restaurant. Dinner is 3 hours with a seated 4 course meal and an open bar. As for decorations, our florist is doing small centerpieces for the restaurant. 2 large arrangements for the ceremony. She's also doing the wedding party's bouquets and buttouneirres. We're also having a photographer to capture the big day.

I don't really remember the house as I was very young. But I believe it was more of a 'cocktail hour's set up where it was just standing/sitting where available.

In the restaurant they spent about $2-3k for 60 people however they didn't provide any drinks. (Literally even had to pay for soda...so don't do that!! Provide all drinks!)

The had a cake, and centerpieces. They had candy in little boxes on each place setting as a favor. Cars box, guest book (one of the canvas thumb print trees). They used someone's phone to play music through the sound system and had a friend be the MC.

They went SUPER low budget but it was surprisingly nice and went a lot better than I expected it to (because of the people...expected a train wreck). I would say to upgrade their ideas a little though!

It's easy, and it will be beautiful! Find a great officiant, book a sweet little restaurant with a private room (or one you can take over), get a jazz duo or a solo musician. Get a cool dress, flowers, plan a great menu with wine and there you go!

These are some of my favorite weddings, honestly!

We are the same way. Wanted very small, but not eloping on our own. We booked a destination wedding package in Jamaica! We will have guests, immediate family. We thought a long time about what we truly wanted our wedding day to be like, and having a big wedding is just not for us. Still trying to figure out when to send announcements..reading on here, it looks like after the wedding is the proper way to do it..not sure yet!

Maybe a beach wedding that is intimate and beautiful. Very easy and you don't have to decorate because the ocean is so simple and pretty. Hope I helped!

Thank you everyone for such awesome ideas and support!

I'm going to take some of these and run with them. I really like the idea of an intimate restaurant setting or renting a little house. I really like the rustic Pinterest look ( I know it's so over done but it's very us haha) maybe some twinkling lights in the back yard and we can use the place as our wedding night location after our guests leave. You guys have got me inspired and hopeful! Thank you so much!!! <3

@Priscilla F. No problem! Good luck with planning!

Do as Celia says- hire and officiant- have a small ceremony- take your family to the best little restaurant you can afford.

Boom.

Done.

Easy peasy lemon squeezy- more than courthouse- less than a full wedding.

Through 5 years of planning we have discussed MANY different scenarios and all but one entailed a guest list of under 20-

a public park

a barn

a little white chapel

a friends house

a VRBO/Home Away, etc...

and finally a religious temple, with large 100+ people reception....

But I think I realized that the large reception was never me, and as time wore on I couldn't shake not having my kids there. So ironically in the end we wended up with the same simple, intimate venue we had first looked at (and booked) in our planning 5 and a half years ago. I'm fortunate in that there is a little outdoor Chapel near me, for free basically. You only get it for an hr and a half, but that's enough for ceremony and some pictures. We get the bridal suite 30 min before. Then 30 min ceremony. During pictures we'll be offering a hot chocolate bar (we're LDS as is our guest list, and alcohol is strictly forbidden), and a Polaroid station for the guestbook. It's completely outdoors, so not much decoration is needed, but I'm hanging to mason jars to resemble the ones on our invitations on the tree at the end of the entrance to the chapel, and a sign at the start of the trail leading up to the chapel. The pavilion where the cocoa and "picture booth" will be probably won't have much decoration though. And I am considering a couple of square lower "vases" to put red ornaments in for the Chapel, that we'll take with us to the restaurant as centerpieces, but also for people to doodle on or leave well wishes.

My aim was to personalize it a bit, but make "take-down" super easy, so we could be out of there quickly and headed to our celebratory dinner. The restaurant asked about linens, etc.. but I don't want to get stuck with extra stuff we won't use or need. Plus again, I just wanted to make it easy for everyone involved. They are giving us a cake table, so I'll have stands, our serving set over there. I do have flutes, but I haven't decided if I should do a toast there or save it for when we get to our honeymoon suite that night. I still have invitations, programs (mainly to be cute and for the dedication on back), and thank you cards at each seat at dinner. The only other thing I'm up in the air about is if there should be some sort of send off or not. I think the kids would like it, but it seems silly from a restaurant too, so I don't know.

All I can say is that I have learned in 5 and a half years is that planning an intimate ceremony with a small guest list can be a MAJOR pain because nobody wants the smaller weddings. They want the $ brought in by the bigger guest lists, the food and beverage minimums, etc... and it sucks. That has probably been one of the most difficult parts of this process. Just finding people that will cater to the littler weddings... our choices are limited, and makes having a reception in a traditional sense, extremely hard. So best of luck to you. Hopefully you will find something just right near you. I 'm thinking of Goldilocks and the 3 Bears when I say that... lol I'm having to drive an hr to mine, but it's worth it!!

I am having a non-traditional wedding with about 28 people. We are getting married in a park and having a lunch reception at a nice restaurant. I agree with you that it can be difficult to plan because most people have big wedding and a lot of vendors do not have interest in small wedding because they don't make as much money. I had looked into catering because the park my ceremony is in has a lodge, but I could not find any caterers that wanted to do a small wedding and the few quotes I got were very expensive. A restaurant with a private room or area is a good option for a small wedding reception. They usually have a minimum amount you have to spend, but it was less expensive than catering.

Costs:

Park Ceremony: $600

Reception: $3,000 including tax and tip

Totally following this thread because there are some great ideas. I am also looking to have a small wedding... now if I can just find the venue. I am aiming for a Friday just to make sure I can get the date I want since we know if will be a small group.

We attended FH's brother's small wedding (about 25 people) in May, and it was lovely. They did have a few dances (mother/son, etc.), which I think I may want to do as well, but no big dance party. Just good food and open bar, and casual conversation. There was no seating chart because it was on a cruise ship before they left (and only very small tables), but it was nicely done.

Christina pretty much nailed the scenario that I love, and we've done many of them.

Smaller weddings are easy to place if you don't look at typical venues who, of course, have a minimum for every sellable space. Many of our restaurants here have private rooms; we have a list of dozens in NJ and NY. The single drawback may be that they are not THAT accustomed to the way weddings run, so often a DOC is a very good investment. Many times the little weddings are in the afternoon, making great background music instead of dancing, a limited bar instead of a full one, less formal attire all appropriate.

For other vendors, the size of the group doesn't really make a difference (and you ARE in non prime season, which should help too); I do the same kind of work for 40 as I do for 200, more or less. A musician will do basically the same thing; so will a photographer, though you probably need more of a portrait session than a 'wedding' session...

It really is doable.

Originally we planned for a larger wedding with around 100 guests. With some issues and delays we ended up doing a destination wedding with a total of 18 guests. It was great! We rented a house in Destin, FL and had the ceremony around the pool and the reception in the house. I loved it and always look back at my pictures to remind me of the day. It went by so fast but was super fun!

One of the places we were looking at when we were planning on keeping our wedding within driving distance was a gorgeous little bed and breakfast about 5 hours away in Branson. They do a lot of intimate weddings, - they actually cap the guest list at 50! They were experienced in having weddings there, had excellent food (we stayed and ate there for a long weekend checking the place out and it was amazing!) and they allowed us to bring in our own alcohol and drinks, which would have saved a ton. We guessed we could have had a full party type wedding and rent the entire place out for about $5000 for 50 people. So there are venues out there that are reasonable and cater to smaller weddings.

We have since decided to scale our guest list back even more (20-30), and have it at Disney World. Our budget has tripled, but it's also an amazing experience for our guests as well, and something we've decided is worth the cost to us.

I like the suggestion of renting out a cute restaurant! That will be much more intimate which is what you want I hope these comments help you some

I've officiated quite a few weddings in nice restaurants with small guest lists. Venue, tables, chairs, linens, food & beverages are included. Centerpieces and music may be extra. But, it is a very simple and inexpensive way to have a small wedding. Just bring in your officiant and photographer -- easy!

Hi Priscilla! Congrats!

I totally didn't want the big huge production. I'd recommend looking into non-wedding venues and restaurants. I'm having 14 guests and we're having the ceremony in our home and then going out for dinner and drinks.

The restaurant we're going to offered to close down for the night for us for 5k but with only 14 guests I felt that might seem odd to be in a space that empty.

It's running us about 5k including everything, half of which is going towards the food and booze. Another large chunk is going towards the photographer so I have lovely photos of the night. Good luck! It's totally doable!