Here’s my last Cinco de Mayo list of the day and it’s focusing on the five reasons to have a small wedding. After all, we can all imagine the large splashy ceremony in the church or synagogue. We can all imagine the huge reception and we can all imagine both the joy and the headaches associated with it. The smaller wedding is different and what might be appropriate at a larger wedding, is not so much at a smaller one.
The Ceremony Location is More Flexible
Whether you define a smaller wedding as a small bridal or few guests, your choice of the wedding ceremony location contains a lot more in the way of options than a huge wedding does. You can get married in a garden, at a bed and breakfast or even in your own back yard. The small ceremony and few guests afford you this luxury.
A Destination Wedding is More Feasible
My husband and I got married at Disney World. We had about twenty-five guests and all of them flew out and spent time at the parks before the wedding and were there to help us celebrate our marriage. A small wedding allows you to take advantage of these types of packages. While you could certainly invite 100 guests to a destination wedding, it could create a financial burden and space concern for your guests and your destination.
Ceremonies Are As Flexible and Unique
When you have fewer guests, your guests can all array themselves out as the bridal party does at a wedding – making it a more intimate and involved ceremony. Instead of a processional, if the wedding is taking place in a garden or bed and breakfast atmosphere, you might serve wine and cheese and allow the guests to mingle until the bridal couple arrives.
Receptions Don’t Have to Be So Formal
A smaller wedding can mean a smaller reception and this can give you a lot of opportunities to make it more personal. For example, as with having the guests stand up at the wedding, you could ask your guests to each offer a toast or memory of the bride, groom or couple as a way of honoring them at their reception. While the guests should keep it clean, it’s a great way to generate love, laughter and memories.
Saving on Money
While just saving money is not a primary reason to have a smaller wedding, it is a benefit for couples who want to make more frugal choices – especially considering that the average wedding costs around $22,000 and that can be a pinch on anyone’s wallet. If you can have a great wedding for a fraction of that cost, you can use the rest of the money as seed money for starting your life together. One couple that I know, received monetary gifts from both sides of the family on their wedding and they used that as the down payment on a home. Their families provided everything else for the wedding ceremony from the backyard location to the food to the family’s amateur photographer doing the pictures and the video. They had a beautiful wedding, a beautiful wedding album and even more – beautiful memories of their families uniting together to help them create a special day.
And isn’t that what getting married is all about?