Is it cliche to start this post saying that this year has been unexpected and challenging? Well, cliches are effective because they’re true! You may remember that Joe and I got engaged last year and started planning a wedding for September 2020. We held out hope for a long time that things would get better in time for our 60 person wedding (that’s small, right? Right.), but alas it couldn’t safely happen.
We decided to push our celebration to 2021, but still wanted to get married this year. After a lot of consideration, we planned a micro wedding for October 4, 2020 with our family and a few friends. We came to the conclusion that we would go ahead with a micro wedding about 4 weeks before our selected date. I’m going to take you through how I modified our plans for a larger celebration and what the experience was like. Let’s get started!
Week 1: Figure out what you can and can’t reuse from your original plans
If you decided to downsize and cancel a larger celebration altogether, you can start by talking with your vendors about how you can amend your original contracts. For us, we had the flexibility to work with existing vendors or start a fresh contract for our smaller event with new vendors. We decided to use a different florist, venue, and hair & makeup artists, but kept the same photographer and officiant, and nixed a DJ.
Week 1 (continued): Pull out your calendar and figure out what dates work
We coordinated with two different venues (our original and our micro wedding space) at the same time, plus the vendors we were going to work with for the micro wedding to make sure we picked a date that worked for everyone. From there, we were able to go to the next step of securing new vendors for the services we needed.
Weeks 1 and 2: Determine what is safe and allowed in your area as you decide on new vendors and make modifications to existing contracts
We were lucky to have already identified the venue we ended up using during our initial venue search as the perfect place for our micro wedding. With ceremony space, food, cake, bar, and reception space included, there wasn’t much else we needed to provide. My mother was a huge help (read: she did it all) finding new hair and makeup artists that were still working during COVID. She also identified a local florist that could support a smaller event, and we were in business from there.
Weeks 2 and 3: Communicate with your guests to ensure everyone is comfortable
Let people know who will be there, how the event will be set up, and other relevant details that will help them feel prepared and comfortable attending.
Week 4: Think through your timeline and all of the elements that you are doing yourself
Admittedly, I spent way too much time creating a timeline. You really only need the big things to be laid out, and the little details fit in where they may. I’d recommend you plan out the “getting ready” time, the ceremony time, and when dinner is served. You can then bucket things in a “before and after” style. I.e. before the ceremony we need to check the volume on the speakers, instead of saying at 4:57pm we need to check the volume on the speakers 😂
You also need to think about the stuff that you are now doing yourself that you might not have been planning to do for your larger celebration. I mentioned that we decided not to have a DJ, so we needed to ask for help to play the music for the ceremony from our phones to the venue’s speakers.
Week 4 (continued): Ask for help and relax
You are having a beautiful event with your family and (maybe) closest friends. So don’t be afraid to ask for help! While we had a somewhat formal wedding in terms of location and attire, it also felt casual since we have the people there who are closest to us. You can ask for support and help and know that everyone is pulling together to help you have the best possible experience!
We had an amazing time are incredibly glad that we decided to get married this year. We’re excited to renew our vows next year in the way that was planned, but it was more important for us to be married than to wait for the “perfect” celebration. And, as it turns out, our intimate wedding was even better than we had hoped for.
I’m going to share more about the wedding planning process for our larger wedding (I’m really proud of my spreadsheet), as well as our mini-moon that replaced our larger trip to Italy and Portugal. Let me know if there’s anything specific you’d like me to cover.
Photography by Sean Madden.
-Alyssa J
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