Micro wedding - how to do this?

[Littlewiseone]

Both of us would love a small wedding (of 43) with just our immediate family and a few friends each.
We live in Essex and moved here six months ago with two year old. We have very little budget £1500-£2k absolutely max to include everything. We want to get married fairly soon due to ageing parents and one with onset Dementia.
We want to have a small wedding, in nature or outdoors with a roof, preferably and non religious.
I have literally no idea where to start :-( I've not been to a huge amount of weddings in my 44 years! How do we do this on a budget and how do you make sure everyone has a good time, especially the older folk.

Thanks for any advice or website links x

When we had our small wedding, aside for ourselves and 2 essential guests, everyone else lived in one city. We kept down costs by having the wedding on a weeknight and having the entire thing only last a few hours. That also suited our personality so we did not feel like we were compromising.

since it was short and sweet, we held it in the city where everyone lived, not in the city that was most convenient for us. That kept their attendance costs down and made us feel much less pressure about hosting.

I should add that our families are based in the UK and Ireland

Marque in the garden? You could do a buffet yourself or maybe friends and family would help out.

Look at a community venue ceremony at Merrymeade House in Brentwood then a meal elsewhere afterwards.

Or a ceremony with just yourselves and two witnesses at the Essex Register Office to do the legal bits then celebrate elsewhere with the money you saved.

We went to a small wedding a few years ago - probably similar numbers. The wedding was in a registry office then we all walked round the corner to a (very nice) pub for a meal in a private room. The couple had lived together for years so wanted no gifts. Instead they asked for us to pay for our meals if we could which I thought was a brilliant idea.