Small Wedding Advice

I photographed a super small wedding a few years ago. Maybe 20 people total.
They got married in a public garden and had dinner in a private dining room at a restaurant.
Guests stood in the garden.
It was a super short ceremony.
Someone brought a speaker and they had a first dance, they also had cake. Just a regular sit down meal with a few extra drinks. It fit this couple perfectly.

Have you already started a guest list? I thought when I started we could keep to a max of 30, but that quickly became 45 just with family we both really wanted to invite. Friends bumped that to nearly 60. A rough guest list was the first thing I did, then started figuring out where we wanted to get married and looking into venues. If you only want about 20-30 people there (often 20 and under is considered elopement for some photographers in my area) I think a formal dinner would probably be the way to go.
Congratulations on your engagement and best wishes!

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I agree with Jessica completely, start with the guest list and see what happens from there. Then set a budget, and then worry about what YOU want it to be. You could do a restaurant reception, look into renting a historic venue in your area, a local park or nature locale, space at a national park, or even an AirBnB. It just depends what vibe you want, so spend some time thinking and discussing that. Consider your season and the theme if you want one, what you'd like for décor and what space works bet with that. If it's in your budget, you could probably benefit from consulting with a planner to steer you in the right direction. Congrats and good luck!

I’m doing a small wedding (max 50) of mostly family and were doing dinner and maybe some lawn games because they come w the venue. No garter/bouquet toss or anything like that with a timeline. Just a chance to hang out, talk to everyone, have some cake and s’mores!

Have you set a date? Date, budget, guest list. That's how we started. I'm not having a small wedding but a start is a start!
The upside of a small wedding is you pretty much can do anything. Even glamping.

We originally wanted the same thing. We're now at sixty people lol!! I completely agree with everyone else, start a guest list and see where to go from there. If you really have your heart set on a small wedding of 20-30, you will be able to make cuts, but you may discover there are people you don't ant to spend the day without.

We had a destination wedding and local reception later. At our DW, we had 15 guests. Ceremony, cocktail hour, and a family-style dinner. We had a musician for the ceremony & cocktail then switched to a playlist for dinner/dessert. Worked great! Felt like a big fun dinner party.

We're having a small, intimate wedding of about 20 people - just our parents, siblings, and a few very close friends. We're getting married at a Bed and Breakfast - We will have a ceremony, a cocktail hour, a formal dinner, followed by cake/desserts and coffee. We might do a bonfire that night as well. We will stay the night at the B&B, along with a few of our guests, and we will have breakfast together the next morning.

Our friends are musicians, so we will have one friend play the acoustic guitar for when I come down the aisle, and my other friend will sing our "first dance" song. For music for cocktail hour/ dinner we will just have a playlist playing over the B&B's speakers.

We decided to keep it small because the wedding is about US and our love for each other. We want to get married, celebrate our love and happiness, and share that with our closest people - And we want to be able to actually spend time with our guests and enjoy our day.
I suggest making a guest list and deciding who you really want there, and who you feel comfortable getting married in front of. When we first started making a guest list, it got out of hand really quick. Because if you invite one aunt, you have to invite the other aunt even though you haven't seen them in three years LOL.... So we decided to cut it off at immediate family.

We are planning on having a casual party the following summer to celebrate our marriage with people that aren't going to be at the wedding. At first we felt bad about not inviting everyone, but you have to remember that this is your day and do whatever is best for you both. You are the ones getting married, not your guests. You don't need to apologize for being you.

Good luck!!

Hi Elle! How is your wedding planning going? Have you made any exciting wedding decisions lately?

That is my exact plan...small wedding and dinner at a restaurant after.

We are having a small wedding about 40-50 guests, we are also doing a Destination Wedding. We are getting married at the National Park outside, reception will be there as well at a Hotel and we have a menu, cake and dance floor.

We are doing a small wedding too. The ceremony will be on the beach and then a bus will take my 30 guests to a bar that let us rent out their lower level. They are letting us decorate it and we will have dinner and a personal bartender. My brother is my DJ and we are getting a small cake and cupcakes from the local bakery. We are only inviting our immediate family and closest friends.

I am having a intimate wedding with 42 guest this December. Our ceremony starts at 5 and should only be 30 minutes. After that we plan to have pictures for about 30 min and guest will have a small cocktail break(30 min) during our pictures. So 6 is our actually dinner time in the reception room, but if we run late with pictures guest will just be in the reception room awaiting our arrival. We have the reception room till 9 but put 8:30 on the invitation so guest wouldn't think its too long. We are having an intimate dinner with no dj or anything crazy. We just wanted close family and friends around us. So our time for everything is about 4 hours which is plenty seeing as its a simple dinner.

We originally were planning a big wedding for 2020 with close to 100 guest but the stress wasn't worth it. We just got engaged this past December and literally in march we decided to get married this December 14. We book a venue that would host the ceremony and the reception. We got a food packaged deal from the venue that included pretty much everything I wanted. My theme is beauty and the beast. I have been buying majority of the decoration and linens for the wedding to help save on cost. Its an intimate dinner because we wont have a dj during the reception. I will have music playing on a speak on Pandora shuffle. I'm happy we decided small because my stress level hasn't been so high. Our budget has been close to 6k but that's majority for the venue and vendors(violinist for ceremony, cake, flower, photography, officiate). The biggest hurdle was guest list and who to invite. I got into many fights with my FH but we came to an agreement and got passed it. Good luck!