Wedding Vows & Ceremony Discussions

small wedding questions

we would like to get married in the fall of 2014. My fiance and I aren't going to have a big wedding, just a small intimate one. And when I say small I mean like 20-30 guests. Has anyone had a wedding this small? Did you have it at a venue with all the things a bigger wedding would entail? Or did you elope and have a ceremony with family? I've always dreamed of having a wedding ceremony in front of family, definatly not a court house. I'd love to hear your ideas, what you're planning for a small wedding or what you have done!

Re: small wedding questions

  • Congratulations on your engagement! I think the type of venue you'd like would help you figure out where you want to get married. Do you plan on getting married in a church? You could do the religious ceremony then a nice, light afternoon reception. Do you and your FI have a favorite restaurant? See if they have space for a ceremony and then you can go right into dinner. FTR my sister got married in city hall on the balcony in front of 50 guests at 2:30 in the afternoon with light appetizers. It was beautiful. You might be surprised how good the city halls or court houses can look. Take a look around.
  • We had about 40 guests at our wedding. The venue we used was smaller (they say they can handle up to 160,but I imagine more than 80 people would feel very cramped). My husband wanted to keep it pretty traditional - we had an outdoor ceremony and cocktail hour, 3 course plated dinner, cake cutting and dancing. Having a small guest list allowed us to provide great food and drinks for our guests and made it easy to say hi to everyone. We did a first look and all the formal portraits before the ceremony, which gave us time to mingle during cocktail hour (highly recommend).

    Ultimately, it's your wedding and you can do what you want with it. Happy planning!
  • You can do pretty much whatever you want for a small wedding (and a big one too, for that matter). I initially wanted a guest list about your size, and we would have rented out a restaurant and had a cocktail reception or dinner. We still probably would have planned on dancing, but I come from a dancing crowd. We ended up with a much bigger wedding (95 guests) and still just did dinner and dancing—no toasts, bouquet toss, etc.
  • You can do whatever you like & can afford. You can have a traditional ceremony in a church or where ever you like followed by a small intimate reception for you and your guests. You can still have a DJ if you want to play some nice dinner music and for some dancing afterwards if you like. The only recommendation I'm going to make due to the size of your guest list, while checking out reception venues, make sure to call around to some local resturants who have party rooms available, they might be able to be more accomodating price wise with the size of your group compared to a venue that is set up to handle 100+ people
  • We are getting married in April and are doing so with just our close family and some of my mom's side. It will be only about 16 people, including us. Clearly we aren't married yet but I can tell you what we are planning!

    The ceremony will be at a bed and breakfast. It's a cute, old, Victorian building that is really pretty inside and full of antiques. We are having it in the one sitting room and doing pictures in the building (there is a gorgeous staircase that I think will be fun to use for pictures). Because it's so pretty we don't have to do much decorating. We also picked it because while we have a faith, we thought the church would be too big for our size group. It would just seem empty, we would have to decorate and there wasn't really anywhere around to do pictures (other than a nearby park by in April we didn't want to chance the weather). We then are going to a nice restaurant for dinner. We have a separate room booked and can tailor the menu for what we want. I know an elderly man who just got married at the restaurant actually, as the upstairs has a large room. I believe there were around 30-40 guests there and it seems like it was beautiful.

    I would look at some different venues like B&Bs and restaurants (non-chain ones... local independent ones would prob have better options).

    Good luck planning! :)


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