10 Helpful Insights and Resources for Planning a Small Wedding
According to a recent study, the average wedding has about 167 people in attendance at it. That’s a lot of people when you really think about it.
If you would like to invite this many people to your wedding, you’re welcome to do it. But you might also want to try planning a wedding that’s on the smaller side in an attempt to save some money and keep things from becoming too chaotic on your wedding day.
Planning a small wedding might be challenging, but you can make the wedding planning process easier on yourself by taking the right steps. Here is a wedding checklist that will set you up with ten useful tips on planning a small wedding.
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Table of Contents
Begin by Deciding How Small You Want Your Wedding to Be
What is a small wedding to you? That’s a question that you’ll have to answer from the start.
In some cases, a small wedding can include just a few people. In others, it might mean inviting 50 people.
You and your soon-to-be spouse will need to get on the same page before you start planning a small wedding. You might each have different definitions of “small” in this instance, so you should decide just how small your wedding is going to be.
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Work on Putting Together a Small Wedding Guest List
Once you know how many people are going to be invited to your wedding, you should work on creating a guest list for it. This might be one of the most difficult parts of planning a small wedding since you’re inevitably going to have to leave some names off your list that you would prefer to include.
Your best bet might be to compile a long list of everyone you would ideally like to invite and then focus on narrowing it down from there. It’ll take some time, but you should be able to get your guest list down to your desired number before too long.
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Figure Out If You Will Have a Wedding Party or Not
Do you want to have a wedding party that includes a best man, a maid of honor, groomsmen, bridesmaids, etc.? It’s up to you to decide if this will be a part of your wedding day.
You should try to have a wedding party even if you keep it on the smaller side with, say, just a best man and a maid of honor. But you might also want to expand your wedding party just a little to include your closest family members and friends.
Putting together a wedding party will give you an opportunity to do fun things like shop for wedding guest dresses. It’s why you don’t want to rule it out as an option right away.
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Think About Which Aspects of a Wedding Are Important to You
When you’re planning a small wedding, some of the aspects of a traditional wedding might not make much sense. So you’re free to pick and choose which aspects you want to include based on what’s important to you.
You might not want to do something like toss the bouquet at your wedding if there will only be a dozen people there. You can skip things like this and replace them with other things if you would like. In the same way, if you want to add some special effects like confetti cannon, you need to make arrangements accordingly.
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Look Around for a Small Wedding Venue
Most of the wedding venues that you find when you Google “wedding venues near me” will be for larger weddings. You’ll need to do some extra digging around to find small wedding venues.
You might want to consider holding a small wedding at a restaurant, a banquet hall, or even your own backyard. They’ll be better spots than most of the traditional wedding venues.
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Find a Caterer Who Can Help With a Small Wedding
In addition to trying to track down a small wedding venue, you’ll also need to locate a caterer who knows how to help couples out with small weddings. It can sometimes be more complicated for caterers to put plans in place for small weddings than big ones.
This might be reason enough to have a small wedding at somewhere like a restaurant. It’ll make it so much easier for you to come up with a menu for your wedding day.
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Get Creative With Your Wedding Seating Arrangements
Planning out a seating chart for a big wedding is no picnic. But there’s a lot less room for error when you’re doing it for a small wedding.
You will need to put some serious thought into how people will be seated at your small wedding. It’ll require some creativity on your part to ensure that everyone is seated in the appropriate locations.
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Call On a Wedding Planner for Help If Necessary
You might very well find that planning a small wedding is harder than you thought it would be. If this ends up being the case, there is no shame in hiring a wedding planner to help you.
Hiring a wedding planner for a small wedding shouldn’t break the bank, and it’ll prove to be well worth it once you see how helpful they can be.
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Stick to a Budget Throughout the Wedding Planning Process
A big part of the reason why you’re going to be planning a small wedding in the first place is to save money. So you shouldn’t attempt to do it without establishing a budget from the start.
You should keep your budget in front of you whenever you’re making wedding-related decisions and use it to guide you in the right direction.
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Prepare to Hurt a Few Feelings Because of Your Small Wedding
We hate to break this to you, but there will be at least a few family members and friends that will be upset about not being invited to your wedding. You’re going to have to mentally prepare for this so that it doesn’t upset you too much.
You might even want to try to get out ahead of it by calling any close family members and friends that won’t be receiving an invitation to explain the situation. All you can do is hope they’ll understand where you’re coming from.
Planning a Small Wedding Is Entirely Possible
Planning a small wedding won’t be easy. But it will be possible as long as you use the tips that we’ve laid out here. You should be able to put small wedding plans into place in no time so that you can have a memorable wedding day without digging yourself into too much debt.
Find more tips on planning a wedding by reading through some of our other blog articles.
