One of the trends we’ve noticed in the past few years is a shift towards more intimate weddings. Just based personally on our experience, I wouldn’t say larger more traditional style weddings are going away any time soon, but we’ve definitely started to see a lot more couples opting for small weddings. It’s something we covered a few years ago in a blog topic but for those who aren’t quite familiar with the term, an intimate wedding isn’t your large traditional celebration with 100+ guests and it’s not quite an elopement with only a handful of people. Intimate weddings are in the neighborhood of 20-30 guests and have many of the same elements of larger weddings but just scaled down in terms of your guest count. One of the biggest things we’ve noticed about these is the overall experience seems to be less stressful for the couple. They aren’t absorbed with trying to keep up with a rigid day of timeline as much as they are just enjoying being present in the moment. They aren’t having to worry about trying to accommodate parking, transportation, and food for let’s say 150 people vs 25? And they get to spend a good amount of quality time with their guests who do make it vs making the rounds. Not to mention not having to deal with the financial stress of feeding 125 people vs lets say 20? Considering catering can be one of the if not the most expensive item in a wedding budget, this can have a huge overall impact on your total wedding costs and free up funds for things like getting the photographer you want, vs the one you can afford after catering, or going on a 3 week honeymoon vs a 1 week honeymoon, or even real florals vs fake. One of our most recent intimate weddings was spent with Kate and Joey and their families in the mountains of Gatlinburg, Tennessee. Like a lot of smaller celebrations, we don’t always get a chance to meet beforehand but we were able to connect with Kate via phone a couple months before her and Joey’s special day and we absolutely fell in love with her energy! In person Kate was even sweeter and Joey was every bit of the gentleman she described when we spoke prior.
The day of their wedding saw what we would describe as awesome weather thrown right in the mix of one of the rainiest February’s on record! The setting was a perfectly luxurious rustic home in a private mountain community overlooking the mountains in the distance. As the ladies finished hair & make up, the fellas played giant Jenga while the moment drew closer and closer! Kate and Joey had the sweetest first look which saw plenty of happy tears! Even though they had their ceremony indoors, the mountain view still served as a beautiful backdrop thanks to the large windows in the home. Everything was about as perfect as you could ask for and just when we thought it couldn’t get any better we took these two out for their couples portraits! They rocked it quite effortlessly and towards the end, we even got in a few dress twirls!
The rest of the evening was filled with quality time with their closest friends & family, home cooked awesomeness, and did we mention cupcakes!?
Thanks as always for following along and big congrats to Kate & Joey!