Intimate and Micro Weddings

Contents

• What are Micro Weddings?
• Why have Micro Wed­dings become more popular?
• Are Micro Wed­dings here to stay?
• 8 Rea­sons to have an Inti­mate, Micro Wedding
• Where can I have a small­er, more inti­mate, Micro Wedding?
• Top Tips for Plan­ning a Small­er Wedding
• Do I need a Pho­tog­ra­ph­er at my inti­mate, Micro Wedding?!?

What are Micro Weddings?

Over the last cou­ple of years, you might have heard peo­ple talk­ing about Micro Wed­dings and won­dered what that means? (Hint, it’s got noth­ing to do with com­put­ers, ha ha!)

You might also hear them referred to as inti­mate wed­dings, mini wed­dings or petite wed­dings, bou­tique wed­dings, pop-up wed­dings, nano wed­dings , elope­ment-style wed­dings and tiny weddings.

With all these dif­fer­ent terms being used it’s easy to get con­fused. Is it an elope­ment? How many guests? What does it mean?

As a West Mid­lands Wed­ding Pho­tog­ra­ph­er, based in Wolver­hamp­ton, I get to see every type of day. I’m lucky to be able to call myself a Micro Wed­ding Pho­tog­ra­ph­er, so let me explain. 

As a rough rule of thumb I’d split the num­bers down as follows

• Elope­ment — Max 4 (The cou­ple plus witnesses)
• Micro Wed­ding — Up to 20/25 people
• Inti­mate Wed­ding — Up to about 40/50 people

Is it the same as an Elopement Wedding?

A tra­di­tion­al elope­ment would involve the cou­ple head­ing off some­where, often with no one know­ing. Pop­u­lar loca­tions for elope­ments in the UK are Corn­wall, Devon, the Lake Dis­trict and Scot­tish High­lands. There need to be 2 wit­ness­es at the cer­e­mo­ny but some­times these are pro­vid­ed by the venue.

With a Micro Wed­ding, there are guests, but often just close fam­i­ly and friends.

It’s like­ly to feel nice and relaxed, per­haps a short­er day and will prob­a­bly cost less than a tra­di­tion­al ‘big’ wed­ding — yay!!!

By it’s very nature, a micro wed­ding is like­ly to feel inti­mate. But the term ‘inti­mate wed­ding’ tends to refer to some­thing a lit­tle larg­er. It retains all the ele­ments of the clas­sic wed­ding day, but on a small­er scale. 

I’ve pho­tographed Mid­lands wed­dings with all dif­fer­ent num­bers of guests. From pho­tograph­ing an elope­ment wed­ding, with just the hap­py cou­ple through to wed­dings with over a hun­dred guests.

Plus, I’ve done plen­ty of inti­mate, micro wed­ding pho­tog­ra­phy too so have a unique per­spec­tive on what makes them work. 

Why have Micro Weddings become more popular?

Let’s take a look at some of the rea­sons why Micro Wed­dings have become a ‘thing’ recently.

I’ve been pho­tograph­ing wed­dings of all dif­fer­ent sizes ever since I start­ed in busi­ness back in 2015 and they’re def­i­nite­ly not a new thing.

But the term ‘Micro Wed­ding’ seemed to come to promi­nence back in 2020, which as you may recall, was not a typ­i­cal year😣.

Covid-19 changed so many things and wed­dings were impact­ed hugely. 

For 6 months of 2020 my cam­eras did­n’t see a sin­gle cham­pagne glass or piece of confetti 😥.

Then, when they start­ed again, there were all sorts of rules in place, includ­ing a lim­it on numbers.

But when peo­ple in love want to get wed, they’re not going to let a lit­tle thing like that get in the way! So quite quick­ly every­one was talk­ing about Micro Wed­dings and real­is­ing how great they can be. Which meant that micro wed­ding pho­tog­ra­phy was the ONLY thing I could do!

As we went into 2021, the rules on max­i­mum num­bers at wed­dings were grad­u­al­ly relaxed and of course we’ve been see­ing lots of big wed­dings ever since.

How­ev­er, Micro Wed­dings weren’t a trend that came and went, they’re very much here to stay as they have var­i­ous advantages. 

This gives them lots of attrib­ut­es which make small­er wed­dings a real plea­sure to photograph.

Reasons why Micro Weddings are here to stay

Now we’re in 2023 and in the midst of a cost of liv­ing cri­sis, cou­ples are under­stand­ably being care­ful with their money. 

Wed­dings can be expen­sive, REALLY expen­sive. A recent sur­vey by Bride­book found that the aver­age cost of a wed­ding in 2023 is near­ly £24,000. But, if you reduce the size of your wed­ding, then the chances are that you’ll also reduce the cost.

There’s a lot of tra­di­tions asso­ci­at­ed with get­ting mar­ried. I’m sure there are count­less cou­ples who, after announc­ing their engage­ment, have had peo­ple say­ing ‘Oh, you sim­ply MUST do this.…’

But why? Who says what a wed­ding should look like? You do you! So, if you want a wed­ding that skips lots of the tra­di­tions and for­mal­i­ty you might be drawn to a more inti­mate affair.

Tra­di­tion says you’re not meant to see each oth­er before­hand, but why not, if that’s what you want?

If you want to see your guests before the cer­e­mo­ny, go for it.

Who decid­ed what peo­ple should wear to a wed­ding and what colour it should be??!

Did you know that pri­or to Queen Vic­to­ria get­ting mar­ried there was no tra­di­tion for a Bride to wear a white dress, it would sim­ply be her ‘best’ dress.

The Roy­al wed­ding start­ed the trend for a long white wed­ding dress, which pre­vailed for years.

But as part of a move towards ‘you doing you’ peo­ple are increas­ing­ly hap­py to wear what THEY want to wear. 

We’ve also seen a grow­ing num­ber of places get a mar­riage licence, some of them of a more ‘bijou’ nature. So lots of places to choose from if you’re want­i­ng a small­er wedding.

8 Reasons to have an Intimate, Micro Wedding

1. Cost sav­ing
2. More inti­mate day
3. More per­son­al — free­dom from convention
4. Less stress to plan/Quicker to organise
5. Can be more eco-friendly
6. Extra time with your guests
7. Com­pro­mise between an elope­ment and a large wedding
8. More relax­ing — less eyes on you!

Let’s look at those rea­sons in a bit more detail

Cost Saving

Accord­ing to Hitched, the aver­age cost per guest for cater­ing is £70. So you do the maths! Hav­ing a more inti­mate day can be £000s cheaper. 

Some venues will have a min­i­mum cov­er lim­it, so you’ll pay for that num­ber irre­spec­tive of how many you actu­al­ly have. 

How­ev­er, with the increased vari­ety of venues avail­able these days you’ll find lots of less-tra­di­tion­al choic­es. These are less like­ly to impose a min­i­mum num­ber of guests giv­ing you the flex­i­bil­i­ty to set your own numbers

More intimate day

It goes with­out say­ing that the small­er the num­bers, the more inti­mate the day will feel. There are lots of cou­ples who sim­ply love the idea of throw­ing the biggest par­ty ever. Where­as oth­ers pre­fer a wed­ding day that is focussed more of those clos­est to them. 

A micro wed­ding allows you to make the day about you and the peo­ple who are most impor­tant to you

More personal — freedom from convention

Larg­er wed­dings tend to be at the larg­er venues. Because of the com­plex­i­ty of organ­is­ing (and run­ning) them, venue co-ordi­na­tors will take some of the bur­den from your shoul­ders and help plan the day.

This tends to mean that the day fol­lows a tried and test­ed struc­ture to ensure that every­thing runs to plan.

By opt­ing for a more bou­tique wed­ding it can be eas­i­er to break away from some of these con­ven­tions and make the day more personal.

With less guests to plan for it can also be eas­i­er to do things which are more bespoke. 

Less stress to plan/Quicker to organise

Now I can’t guar­an­tee that a micro wed­ding will be less stress­ful to organise!! 

But, by slim­ming down the day, per­haps omit­ting cer­tain ele­ments there is less to do. Log­i­cal­ly, this should equate with less stress!

It can also make it quick­er to organ­ise. The quick­est turn­around I’ve come across for a wed­ding was 6 weeks!!

More eco-friendly

The nature of wed­dings does mean that they have a cer­tain car­bon foot­print which is hard to avoid.

Reduc­ing the num­bers and com­plex­i­ty of the day should lead to a wed­ding that is more eco-friend­ly by involv­ing less ‘stuff’.

If your guest list is made up of close fam­i­ly and friends then it’s more like­ly that trav­el can be sim­pli­fied too, giv­ing anoth­er ben­e­fit to the planet

Extra time with your guests

I know from my own wed­ding that you reach mid­night and think ‘Oh, we’ve hard­ly spo­ken to them, and them and them’, even though you’ve been con­stant­ly mingling.

Now, if it’s a large par­ty that you want, that’s pret­ty much inevitable and your guests will still have had an amaz­ing time.

But, if your guest list com­pris­es 10–20 peo­ple then it’s far eas­i­er to spend qual­i­ty time with each of them.

Compromise between an elopement and a large wedding

Per­haps the idea of 100 peo­ple there for your wed­ding fills you with dread, so you’ve been think­ing the only alter­na­tive is to elope.

A micro or inti­mate wed­ding gives you a third choice.

Much sim­pler, more about what is at the heart of every day, the mar­riage cer­e­mo­ny itself

More relaxing — less eyes on you!

For quite a few cou­ples, what puts them off the idea of get­ting mar­ried is the thought of all those peo­ple look­ing at them!

They want to get mar­ried and would love to have every­one they know there, if only they did­n’t have to be the cen­tre of attention!

An inti­mate, micro wed­ding allows you to do that. 

I asked Ash­leigh & Adam, who had a more inti­mate wed­ding cer­e­mo­ny, what their rea­sons were. This is what they said

“We want­ed a small­er wed­ding because we’re both pret­ty intro­vert­ed and did­n’t par­tic­u­lar­ly want the lime­light.  Ash actu­al­ly said to me she nev­er intend­ed on get­ting mar­ried as walk­ing down the aisle with every­one look­ing at her was her worst nightmare.

We also want­ed to keep costs down, I have quite a big fam­i­ly and we both have quite a large cir­cle of friends, so when decid­ing who would make the cut for the day, we could­n’t decide where we’d actu­al­ly stop.  We took the view that it would be imme­di­ate fam­i­ly only.”

Where can I have a smaller, more intimate, Micro Wedding?

The sim­ple answer to this ques­tion is prob­a­bly anywhere!!

Per­haps not an espe­cial­ly help­ful answer but it’s large­ly true. Most venues are very flex­i­ble in terms of num­bers and space so can eas­i­ly work with any number.

I’ve pho­tographed lots of small­er, micro wed­dings in venues that could just as eas­i­ly cater for hun­dreds of guests. 

How­ev­er, there are venues and choic­es for a small­er, more inti­mate micro wed­ding that might work better.

For exam­ple, a church cer­e­mo­ny fol­lowed by the cel­e­bra­tion else­where can work well.

I’ve pho­tographed wed­dings like this, in a church, with a move to some­thing like a mar­quee at home or a decent sized AirBnB afterwards.

Sim­i­lar­ly, there are some great reg­istry offices around, or licensed venues to have the cer­e­mo­ny. Then move on to some­where after­wards, per­haps a restau­rant or a pub with a pri­vate room.

Des­ti­na­tion wed­dings have become more pop­u­lar for a num­ber of reasons. 

It could be a desire to do some­thing dif­fer­ent, to com­bine the wed­ding with the hon­ey­moon, or to have a small­er, more per­son­al day.

I pho­tographed a wed­ding in France, in the Cham­pagne region, which was a won­der­ful­ly inti­mate affair with just a few close friends and fam­i­ly there. 

Top Tips for Planning a Smaller Wedding

• Think about what are your ‘must have’s?
• Find the right venue
• Con­sid­er a week­day wedding
• Who are your ‘VIP guests that you sim­ply MUST have there?
• Think about using a wed­ding planner
• Per­son­al­ize what you can
• Con­sid­er a social media ban with an unplugged wedding
• Don’t be afraid to break the rules and ditch the stuff you don’t want or mix things up

What are your ‘Must-Haves’?

Reduc­ing the size of your guest list does­n’t mean that you can’t still include all the wed­ding ele­ments that you’d like. So it’s a good idea for the two of you to sit down and decide what things you sim­ply won’t com­pro­mise on.

It could be top qual­i­ty food, hav­ing some live music or hir­ing a fan­tas­tic photographer 😉

In fact, by reduc­ing your spend on cater­ing, it gives you more mon­ey to spend on oth­er things. 

Finding the right venue for Micro Weddings

What con­sti­tutes the right venue is of course a very per­son­al choice. But a large, venue that says it can accom­mo­date your wed­ding of 20, might make you feel lost in the big space.

By look­ing at a bespoke option, where you com­bine a cer­e­mo­ny in one place with recep­tion else­where, you will have a much big­ger choice.

There are amaz­ing places like libraries, art gal­leries, cin­e­mas, and many more, which are licensed for wed­ding ceremonies. 

If you have a larg­er num­ber of guests then being able to accom­mo­date them all is a top pri­or­i­ty and will reduce the num­ber of venues avail­able to you.

With a small­er num­ber of guests this becomes less of a concern.

Consider a Weekday Wedding

I’d say that between 40–50% of the wed­dings I pho­to­graph are NOT on a Sat­ur­day and that applies to plen­ty of larg­er wed­dings as well as more petite weddings.

Cost is a big rea­son for cou­ples to con­sid­er days which might be cheap­er than the weekend. 

With less guests you’ve got less peo­ple that might have to con­sid­er tak­ing time off for a week­day wed­ding. It also gives you the oppor­tu­ni­ty to think about extend­ing the time that you’re togeth­er. Why not meet the night before the wed­ding for a fam­i­ly meal and have brunch togeth­er the day after?

You’re also like­ly to find that venues are more flex­i­ble on num­bers if you’re hap­py to avoid peak days.

Who are your VIP guests

If you’ve decid­ed that a Micro wed­ding is for you, then think­ing about your guest list is vital.

What­ev­er your rea­sons for hav­ing a small­er wed­ding, if 20 is your lim­it (or what­ev­er num­ber you’ve gone for) then stick to it! 

That might mean mak­ing some dif­fi­cult deci­sions about who NOT to invite, such as plus 1s, chil­dren, more dis­tant fam­i­ly mem­bers, etc.

But remem­ber, it’s YOUR wed­ding and you’re plan­ning the day that YOU want. 

Think about the peo­ple you can’t imag­ine get­ting mar­ried with­out, the peo­ple that you see all the time. They will be your VIP guests. 

Do you need a Wedding Planner for Micro Weddings?

So you’ve hav­ing a small­er, more inti­mate wed­ding. Less guests means less to do right? So why would you need a wed­ding planner??!

Well, maybe you do!

There are lots of rea­sons that cou­ples choose to use a wed­ding plan­ner. Here are a few

• So they have an expert to help guide them through the process. 
• To destress the plan­ning of the wedding
• For their ‘lit­tle black book’ of contacts
• Event man­age­ment on the day

All of these ben­e­fits would apply what­ev­er the size of the wed­ding. I asked Lind­say from Worces­ter­shire Wed­ding Plan­ner for her thoughts.

“I think that when things are min­i­mal there are less places to hide, so you want to make sure things are done right.

Just because you’re going for some­thing small­er, you should­n’t miss out on all the best stuff. In fact I’d say it’s all the more rea­son to real­ly hone in on what you want and make sure you do it well.

A plan­ner can help you find the very best peo­ple, so it can be inti­mate but still magical.”

Personalize what you can

With less guests you’re able to put more of your time and bud­get into some of the fin­er details. 

When the peo­ple attend­ing the wed­ding are those clos­est to you, per­haps con­sid­er mak­ing the cer­e­mo­ny as per­son­al and mean­ing­ful as possible.

Could you include ele­ments that real­ly mean some­thing to your guests, because you know them so well?

Per­haps bespoke gifts for the guests to recog­nise the close bond you have with them

Social Media Ban

If you’re hav­ing a small­er wed­ding then that prob­a­bly means that there are peo­ple that you’ve not invit­ed who would be there if it was a larg­er affair.

Main­tain­ing ‘radio silence’ is one way to give a lit­tle pri­va­cy to the day. 

Guests not using their phones for social media also means that they’re more present in the moment.

Plus, if you’ve booked a Micro Wed­ding Pho­tog­ra­ph­er (like me!) then let them get on with cap­tur­ing all the glo­ri­ous details whilst your guests enjoy the day.

Don’t be afraid to Break the Rules at your Micro Wedding

If you don’t want a first dance — don’t have one

Not a fan of wed­ding cake — have some­thing else instead

If you don’t like tra­di­tion­al wed­ding clothes — wear what you want

Fan­cy doing the ‘legal bit’ before­hand — do it

A lot of cou­ples find that with less guests there, it takes away some of the pres­sure to con­form. Those who are there know you the best so will love that you’re doing it your way!

I’ve pho­tographed lots of wed­dings for cou­ples who have start­ed the day small and then it got big­ger as they went along.

For exam­ple, 20 or 30 (or even less) at the cer­e­mo­ny, some extra for the wed­ding break­fast and then more again for the par­ty in the evening.

Lizzie & Matt had a legal cer­e­mo­ny at Wethele Manor with just their par­ents there. Half an hour lat­er they had a larg­er cer­e­mo­ny out­side in the court­yard at their venue. More guests joined them for the meal and then more again in the evening for the par­ty. This phased approach was per­fect for them and is a great exam­ple of cou­ples doing it their way.

There have also been wed­dings where small­er num­bers has allowed them to have the day they want­ed. One where they got mar­ried in a reg­istry office, went to a coun­try pub for lunch and then to a music fes­ti­val (an actu­al prop­er fes­ti­val!) for the rest of the weekend.

Reduced num­bers can make it eas­i­er to do it your way.

Do I need a Photographer at my intimate, Micro Wedding?!?

Now, it’s not going to sur­prise you that my answer to this ques­tion is HELL YES!!!

You might have less guests but you’ll have just as many mem­o­ries. There is how­ev­er some­thing of a knack to pho­tograph­ing a small­er, micro wed­ding, so they don’t stand out and get in the way.

I think my doc­u­men­tary wed­ding pho­tog­ra­phy approach helps with this. This allows me to be in the midst of the action but be for­got­ten about, hid­den in plain sight. I invest­ed in new cam­eras a cou­ple of years ago which lends them­selves per­fect­ly to being a micro wed­ding pho­tog­ra­ph­er. I can use them silent­ly if I wish, so there’s no dis­tract­ing ‘click’ of the cam­era. They also have oth­er tech­ni­cal advan­tages which allow me to pho­to­graph wed­dings in ways that make me less conspicuous. 

There’s a rea­son I’ve been called a Wed­ding Ninja!!

Melis­sa & Dar­cy left me a love­ly review after I pho­tographed their wed­ding and said “Nick is the mas­ter of the can­did shot and blends per­fect­ly into the background”

I also try to make the effort to fit in to the wed­ding day by chat­ting to peo­ple! I find this makes peo­ple feel more relaxed around me and less like­ly to notice that I’m tak­ing their photograph 😉

Sophie & Ross said this in their review, “He was such a plea­sure to have around on the wed­ding day, chat­ting to guests and mak­ing us laugh”

It’s work­ing in this way which means I can be a micro wed­ding pho­tog­ra­ph­er and still blend even whether you’ve got 10 guests or 100.

A small­er wed­ding does­n’t mean that you won’t still have awe­some fun, emo­tion­al moments and a fab party.

Ash­leigh & Adam gave me their thoughts on hav­ing a pho­tog­ra­ph­er for their more inti­mate wedding

“It was a com­plete no-brain­er for us that we want­ed a pho­tog­ra­ph­er and were very spe­cif­ic in that they need­ed to fade into the back­ground as much as pos­si­ble. 

We want­ed to cap­ture the day as nat­u­ral­ly as pos­si­ble and using your­self absolute­ly fit the bill. 

Even to this day, we look through the pho­tos and rem­i­nisce on the day as you cap­tured the emo­tion perfectly. 

For us, hav­ing a for­mal arrange­ment with forced shots would­n’t have worked for us as we’re quite a relaxed family.”

So there you have it, my thoughts on the rea­sons why a small­er, inti­mate micro wed­ding could be the way to go for your big day.

If you’re wed­ding plan­ning then oth­er blogs to check out are

• 33 Awe­some Birm­ing­ham and West Mid­lands Wed­ding Venues
• A Pho­tog­ra­pher’s Guide to Out­door Weddings
• Worces­ter­shire Wed­ding Venues
• 70 Ideas for Wed­ding Entertainment
• 8 Alter­na­tives to a Mar­quee for your Wedding

If you’ve read right to the end of this blog then you should have realised that I’ve pho­tographed quite a few wed­dings, 200 and count­ing actually!

Writ­ing a blog like this allows me to pass on some of that expe­ri­ence to peo­ple who are just at the start of the jour­ney, so I hope it’s been helpful.

Once you’re at the point of need­ing a micro wed­ding pho­tog­ra­ph­er then please get in touch. I’d love to have a chat!