Micro wedding ideas?

[Weddingzz]

My DP and I are trying to plan our wedding and I’d love some ideas. What worked well for your wedding? Any ideas for us?

I wanted to elope, but my (same sex) partner is desperate to have both her parents in attendance, so we’ve compromised on a micro wedding (about 30 guests in total.)

We definitely won’t be doing wedding speeches for various reasons. No bridesmaids either. We want to keep it quite low key.

I was a covid bride. Our legal wedding was as small as you can get. Two witnesses was all we were allowed. They took us to the nearest pub for a champagne breakfast after.

The 'real' wedding in 2023 was not that much bigger, just immediate family and close friends. I did have bridesmaids but only my best friend as MoH and two little cousins. We did a buffet lunch, no table plan, people just sat wherever they wanted. Only my husband did a short speech. I made goody packs for the kids to keep them occupied everyone else was just happy to socialise. We had two separate cakes, one chocolate, one vanilla rather than a tiered cake. Most expensive things were the venue and photographer.

From what I've heard the best small weddings are just a simple civil ceremony, then a meal out. I have not been to one like that. If you don't want formal/professional photos you could get a friend or relative with a fancy camera to get some shots. Or one idea I heard was putting a disposable camera on each table and anybody can pick it up and snap a few photos. It's hard to say what would suit you without knowing you. But make sure it is exactly what you want, don't let anyone take over, my MiL was pretty good but I had to be firm with my mother and grandmother.

One of my colleagues had a micro wedding. They had about 25 guests, with the ceremony followed by a meal at a nearby restaurant. She didn't tell the restaurant that it was for a wedding dinner until very close to the time, as she didn't want any of the fanfare (or hiked prices). She was really happy with how that aspect worked out 😁

My brother and his wife had a registry wedding with just immediate family and then we all went out for a lovely meal in a private room in a nice pub. There were some flowers on the table as it was quite a nice pub and they had flowers anyway. It was just a lovely low key day.

Friends (I couldn't go) hired a tour boat as they lived near a river and they all had a boat trip and afternoon tea with some fizz.

Just don't get sucked into photographers, wedding bouquets, harpists etc unless that's actually what you want.

Ceremony and a nice meal...

We had 15 people at ours (including us). Had a ceremony in the register office and then all went for lunch in a nice restaurant. Back to our house afterwards for champagne and cake. No photographer, no speeches. We had invited 22 but the others couldn’t make it as it was a week day.

My eldest got married with a 6 month old baby. They had a church wedding at our local church, then they asked the guests to share a meal with them at a local hotel (pay for themselves rather than give a gift). It was £35 a head for a 3 course meal, we put £500 behind the bar for drinks and the hotel even supplied a cake. And funnily enough, no one moaned at spending the £35. It was a fantastic day, think there were around 40 of us in total. And we bought them a room overnight/breakfast/evening meal as her present from us.

Lucky you. The best weddings I've been to have been micro.

The best one was they booked out a small neighborhood restaurant exclusively and laid on a gorgeous meal and lashings of wine for everyone. Some speeches but all very casual. It was so intimate and special. Candles everywhere. Lovely flowers. Everyone got to speak to everyone else. It was actually romantic unlike my 200 person wedding where I didn't speak to my husband at all.

A nice thing a few have done is get a humanist celebrant (or other celebrant) to do the service on-site or somewhere special and personal (a park? A beautiful space somewhere? an abandoned building and fill it with candles? Your garden?) and just do the legal paperwork separately.

When I was younger I was very hung up on wanting the ceremony to also be the legally binding bit but now having attended lots of international and micro weddings the fact that a piece of paper has been signed another time and place is meaningless. When the celebrant says 'I now pronounce you partners' (or whatever form of wording you want) - that's the moment you'll feel married and your loved ones will experience as being the big one.

We only had 12 - we had a registry office ceremony and then a nice meal . I ordered some games for the table and we were home by 9pm it was lovely. We had great food and plenty of champagne and then went on honeymoon the following morning

One of the best weddings I ever went to was a micro wedding. At Claridge’s midweek at 3pm. The bride, groom, her parents, his dad (mum had died) and their four best mates - of which I was one.

The ceremony was so intimate we were all in tears and ended up in one big group hug. Afterwards we had a glass of champagne and a piece of “wedding” cake - just a chocolate cake prepared by the hotel.

Then we got in a couple of cabs and went to their favourite pub and had sausage and mash. They sent out a WhatsApp after the ceremony telling all their mates they’d got married and if they were about then to come to the pub after work to celebrate. They set up a tab to get everyone a drink, the pub had a live band playing, and we all just had a fab easy going night out. It cost them just over £4k. Honestly, the BEST wedding.

Congratulations!
It sounds lovely!
I think 30 people is many people! But I haven't been to a lot of weddings, so perhaps it's just me not being used to how large weddings usually are.
I guess it also depends on how big your families are, and how many friends you have.

Lots of good advice here on this thread. I hope you will have a wonderful wedding day!

we got married at the registry office and hired a small restaurant that seated 27 people. Had a three course lunch and home by 4pm to feed the dog. It was lovely!

We were thinking about not having a wedding reception at all too, but going straight on the honeymoon instead.

I’m not sure if we would regret skipping the reception in the future though…

Up to you - but if you have some people there at the wedding it might be nice not to just wave goodbye to them and disappear off. Depends how far they have travelled, how often you see them etc. If you see them all the time then that'll be fine. But I'd have thought be nice to have a drink or a meal or something!

Edited to add - I love a wedding and if I'd taken a bit of time off work to go to one I think I'd like to hang out a little bit longer with the happy couple and friends.

Yeah, we’d have a meal together after the ceremony, for sure. (I should have specified in my pp.)

We’re just considering our options at this point

We got married in a church, had an 'afternoon tea' style buffet in the church hall, music during the service provided by the 2 brass bands we play in. Nothing fancy but people really enjoyed just sitting around chatting.

Why can’t her parents come if you elope?

if you want to go abroad just tell them when and where the wedding is. Married, meal after, get back to your honeymoon- they could stay a bit longer to make it a holiday and you could move on to a secondary hotel/destination if you think they may want to tag along.

if you/they can’t afford abroad registry office. They can be your witnesses, meal out after, off on honeymoon.

it doesn’t have to be elope with nobody or a traditional, if small, wedding.

DP’s step-father has MS and is unable to travel (her biological father died many years ago) and MIL is his carer and is unable to leave him.

Eloping with them as our witnesses just isn’t possible, I’m afraid.

That sounds wonderful!

2 sets of friends did similar with I think 20 and the other friend 30ish guests. Both got married at the registry office then:

1 has connections to football and borrowed an open type marquee for their garden. They had trays of finger food, sandwiches, wraps, charcuterie board, fruit skewers etc. It was lovely weather which helped

The other had hired the back room in a restaurant and we all had a set menu- they paid and we purchased our own drinks. No cutting of cake, dancing etc at either wedding, but both really lovely and low key.

More recently, we were invited to a wedding which we couldn't go to. Also registry office then to a local pub with a pizza truck outside. They sent the price list for the pizzas and said they'd provide a single glass of prosecco each. No mention that buying our own meal was in lieu of a gift though which I thought was rather rude.

30 is micro it’s just normal! I had 32 invited guests, church wedding (not applicable in your case) then a reception in our local gastro pub, 3 course dinner, live band. We invited work colleagues and friends to the evening do and anyone can attend a church wedding anyway (we had cake and drinks in the hall after the service).

You could do similarly but book the registry office followed by a meal then an evening with your preferred entertainment (we had a blues band, we know the lead singer). Ours came in at under £5k including the bar bill which we paid for, we also collected 390kg of food for the food bank plus £460, we said no gifts, too much stuff already

I had a small wedding, just myself, my DH, our children, our parents and my grandparents. We had a civil service quite late in the day and then a catered meal at home. We have a conservatory so were able to get a large enough table in there, had florist make some decorations for hallway and table, it was dark by the time we were eating as it was a winter wedding so we had mainly candles and fairy lights.

That sounds really lovely!

We got married at Dunvegan Castle on Skye with just my parents and my brother and sister in law there (my husband has no immediate family), and then had a really lovely meal at the Three Chimneys restaurant close by
My family were just with us for a long weekend and then we had the rest of the week there to ourselves, it was perfect for us!