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All The Things We Love About Intimate Weddings

24

Nov 2020

When it comes to planning your wedding, no matter what the size, it can be a vast mixture of emotions. It can be chaotic, exciting + overwhelming all at the same time, but mainly a new experience that you may not know right away what direction you want to take it in. Planning a wedding is meant to be fun + love-focused ~ not stressful + frustrating. While hiring a planner can help alleviate a lot of stress that goes into detailing out + organizing all of the nuances that go into a big production like a wedding, keeping your guest list small is another huge way to keep your wedding on the chiller side. This year has proven a lot of things, and one of them that we love the most is that an intimate wedding can be a better option for couples. Keeping your guest list short + sweet can alleviate a lot of stress, a lot of money, and a whole lotta drama. Fun fact: Some of our most extravagant + elaborately designed weddings were microweddings ~ even before it was a “thing”!

This week we’re sharing some of our best kept (and now shared!) secrets when it comes to planning a small wedding. Enjoy!

When thinking about your wedding scope + size, keep in mind three major components ~

VENUE
COST/BUDGET
GUEST LIST

Venue: This is where you are going to start the rest of your life married to the person you love. The place where you get married will always hold a special place in your heart, so it is important to make sure that it is the right one for you. Whether it is on the beach, in a forest, on top of a mountain, or in a chapel, one of the biggest perks to hosting a small wedding is that you can host your wedding at pretty much any location because most places have a maximum on guests, but no minimum!

Cost: While dreaming up your perfect wedding, costs can hold a heavy weight on determining what you can or cannot afford. Weddings are expensive ~ the average wedding in California will cost you upwards of $60,000. Hosting a wedding is a big financial undertaking, so when thinking about who you want to spend that money on, we advise being very mindful when creating your guest list. While there are certain staple investments that don not change based on guest count, including photography, videography, DJ + planning services, there is a substantial list of costs that WILL dramatically decrease if your guest list is smaller. Some of these include:

Catering costs
Bar costs
Dessert costs + Size of cake
Centerpieces + Floral arrangements
Place settings, Tables + Chairs
Invitations
Lounge furniture
Linens + Napkins

Guest List: When starting to plan your wedding, one of the easiest things to do is to get swept up in the guest list. You want all of your friends to be there, even though you haven’t spoken to several of these people in years. Your mom insists that all of your cousins be invited. His dad wants to invite all of his work colleagues. It’s easy to fall into the trap of wanting to invite anyone + everyone ~ after all, this is a really big day ~ but going overboard with the guest list can get expensive, stressful, and can quite frankly be unnecessary. Your wedding day goes by so quickly ~ it’s already going to be challenging to spend quality time with your wedding party + immediate families on the day of, let alone 100-200 other people. With this in mind, here are some questions to ask yourself when trying to narrow down that guest list from everyone you know, to the people who matter most:

Why do you want them there?
Do you talk regularly?
Would it bring you joy if you saw them in their chair as you walk down the aisle?
Would you feel like you have to entertain + keep an eye on them?
Are they out of town + would they come into town for your wedding?
Would having them there make or break your wedding?
Would you want them in the wedding party?

Not only can having a smaller wedding help with costs, happiness, and pure enjoyment of your day, but it can actually help you plan the exact dream wedding you want for a fraction of the cost. In many cases, brides crave the more expensive, over-the-top, and drop dead gorgeous items for their wedding + being able to significantly cut down the guest list will open up your budget for more fun stuff, instead of having to settle for less.

Here at Leilani Weddings, no matter how big or small, close to home or destination, we cater to all your needs, wants, wishes, and desires. With that being said, we are excited to announce that due to popular demand (and the current state of the world), we have released our Elopements + Micro Weddings package, a new way of planning in an effort to assist couples in planning a new kind of wedding. This new package rate starts at $5,000 + includes: