What Size Wedding is Right for You?

Not sure what size wedding is the best for you and your partner? Here are the pros and cons of each to help guide you through the decision!

One of the most important and impactful decisions you’ll make when you start planning your wedding is what size it is, as this affects pretty much EVERY other aspect of your wedding. From your invite list, your venue choices, catering options, your timeline, the feel of your day, and more, your wedding size affects practically every part of your day. It’s understandable then that this decision is one of the more stressful in the planning process. So how do you decide what size is best for you? That’s what we’re here to answer today. In this article we’ll go over the different wedding sizes as well as the pros and cons of each so that you’ll be able to find the option that fits YOU best.

The Different Wedding Sizes

Elopement

We’ll start with the smallest option and work our way up, which means we are of course starting with elopements! Elopements used to look a lot different than they do today. These used to be more secretive marriages where a couple would run off and get married to one another without the knowledge of their family. Nowadays elopements are a more public and common choice for couples looking to have a small and incredibly intimate wedding experience. Elopements today include the couple and can also include up to 8 guests. Like with every style and size of wedding there are some pros and cons to take into account when considering an elopement.

Pros 

Elopements have been on the rise in popularity for a while, but after a certain global pandemic in 2020 they became much more common as larger weddings weren’t possible for a bit. This boost in popularity led to a lot of creativity in the crafting of elopements, which is one of the main draws of them. With a small to non-existent guest list couples are able to put their budget towards the experience of the elopement rather than towards their venue, catering, etc. This means couples can practically go anywhere and do anything for their elopement. There is still a lot of planning that goes into an elopement, but it’s on average much less than a more traditional wedding day. 

Another huge benefit of eloping is the flexibility that comes with booking your vendors for your celebration. With the freedom of choice and low guest count that make an elopement what it is, it’s much more common to plan a weekday celebration. This makes it simpler and more realistic to book some pretty spectacular vendors without needing to reach out a year or more in advance.

Cons

One of the only drawbacks to elopements is that due to their nature you aren’t able to celebrate your marriage with all of your friends and family. This is often one of the reasons a couple chooses to elope, but there are instances where couples later regret not having a larger celebration. Luckily there’s a workaround for this that we’ll cover later in the article! Outside of that though, the flexibility of elopements really allows you to make the experience whatever you want it to be.

Micro, Intimate, and Small Weddings

Next up are micro, intimate, and small weddings. Depending on who you ask, micro weddings and intimate weddings are often used interchangeably, though some photographers classify them separately. In either case though they have very similar pros and cons to them, and those also fall in line with small weddings, which is why we’re covering them all in the same section here. These weddings consist of gatherings between 10 to 75 guests, so they usually have a more organized and structured feel to them. This is due to a venue being more of a necessity, a reception being more common place, and more. Let’s dive into the pros and cons of these slightly larger celebrations.

Pros

These smaller size weddings strike a great balance of celebration and intimacy. The smaller scale gives couples the opportunity to be more creative in their wedding planning. There are a ton of intimate wedding venues out there that are beautiful with lots of character, perfect for a more intimate celebration. A smaller guest count also means you won't have to invest as much into catering, so similarly to an elopement that part of your budget can go towards a different areas of the wedding day experience!

Cons

While it’s not too common, there are some wedding venues out there that have a minimum guest count requirement in order to reserve their space. This can limit your choices somewhat, but again this isn’t a very common issue. While the guest list of these weddings is smaller than our next wedding option we’ll cover, you do still have to factor your guests into account during your decision making. For example, if you plan to have your grandparents attend your intimate wedding you’ll have to take into account their ability to travel when choosing your venue/location. This limits the ability of having a destination wedding a bit, but not completely.

Large Wedding

Next up are large weddings, which count as anything above 75 guests. These celebrations often take the shape of a more traditional wedding day, but in recent years couples have gotten more and more creative with them. From their wedding day timeline, to the structure of the day, and even their choice of venue(s), couples are making these larger celebrations more personal to them and I am ALL for it! There are of course still some drawbacks to this size of wedding day though, so let’s go over them.

Pros

First we’ll take a look at the positives of having a wedding of this size, the most apparent is of course being the size itself. Large weddings are a PARTY! It’s a ton of fun dancing the night away alongside ALL of your friends and family, it’s practically the only time in your life where everyone you know comes together to celebrate you. Many wedding venues, whether they’re more modern or have been around a while, now have space for both your wedding ceremony and reception to take place at the location. This helps to keep things simpler in terms of travel for your day, allowing you more time to actually celebrate and enjoy yourselves with your guests. You can still have your ceremony and reception at separate locations too, and this will give your wedding album and the day itself an incredible varied feel.

Cons

While these larger sized weddings are some of the most fun and lively, there are a few things that make them not the best choice for everyone. Due to the large size and guest count, your choice of venue can be pretty limited in your immediate area. Traveling to a venue that’s further away is an option, but that raises another issue with larger weddings. The larger guest count means that it’s more likely that any sort of destination wedding would cause some guests to miss the celebration, either due to an inability or unwillingness to travel.

These larger weddings also have some of the highest costs due to your catering requirements, the vendors you’ll end up booking, and the cost of the venue itself. Lastly, while things have gotten more flexible in recent years, there is still more of an expectation of traditions being upheld in these larger weddings. This can limit your creativity a bit depending on how important these traditions are to your families.

Hybrid / Combination Wedding

There’s a reason that the question of what size wedding is right for you is a hard one to answer, luckily there's a recent trend that is solving a lot of the headaches that come with this decision! A hybrid, combination, or split wedding is the next evolution of making your wedding day your own by having the best of both worlds.

My couple Katie and Joe took this approach for their wedding and it turned out fantastic! The two had a smaller wedding with no wedding party, and a more intimate style reception. Rather than a traditional dance, the two had a 3 piece band for background music as they mingled and enjoyed the company of their family and friends in attendance. It was such a cool mixture of an intimate and elegant wedding, but still had some of the more traditional wedding aspects mixed in such as some reception speeches from family members of both Katie and Joe. 

This type of celebration gives couples a ton of options when deciding on what size wedding to have, as it really can take any shape imaginable. Want to elope on your own and then have a massive reception at a later date? You can do that. Looking to do a more intimate ceremony the morning of your wedding with a more traditional reception later on in the evening? You can do that too. You can even have a celebration with your friends and family as a send off before you two travel for a destination elopement. The options are quite literally endless!

Choosing What’s Right for YOU

SO what size wedding is right for you then? Ultimately it’s a question that only YOU can answer! Articles like this and conversations with friends and family can help guide you and address some of the concerns you may have, but at the end of the day it’s going to come down to what you and your partner want. The important bit is to be open and honest with your partner when discussing the vision you each have for your wedding day. With that in mind and with your knowledge of the pros and cons of these different size weddings you can make the choice that is best for you. Because at the end of the day it is your wedding, make it what YOU want it to be!

Now that we know the differences between these different size weddings it’s time for you and your partner to discuss the options! Daydream about your wedding together and start to come up with a picture of what your day will look like. For more wedding tips make sure to check out some of my other articles, and if you’d like to see more of my work you can check out my Instagram as well.