If you’ve been around for a while now, you might know that intimate weddings are kind of my jam.  I love these wedding days for endless reasons, as do my couples, which is why I will always advocate for them. But why should YOU have an intimate wedding for your wedding day? While I could go on for days about the reasons I love them and the things that make them great, I condensed my list down to my top 5 to show you the best of the best on what makes these days so special!

What is an Intimate Wedding Day

Before we get into what makes intimate wedding days so incredible it would help to know exactly what they are. Much like the name suggests, an intimate wedding is similar to your standard wedding day, but with a smaller, more intimate guest list. Brides defines an intimate wedding as a wedding day with between 50 to 75 guests, so not quite as small as an elopement, but much smaller than your large scale 100-200+ people weddings. The smaller size gives intimate weddings that personal feel the name suggests, as well as a ton of flexibility in many areas which we’ll discuss next!

5 Reasons to Have an Intimate Wedding

1. Intimate Invite List

One of the biggest reasons I am a fan of intimate weddings is the intimate guest list that comes with it.  With this smaller guest list, you are able to only invite the people you want to be there more than anything. While it is fun to have everyone you know present at a larger wedding, having a more condensed guest list of only your closest people makes for a much more personal experience for your wedding day. At larger weddings, you hardly have time to talk to your guests outside of the quick “thank you for coming”. Intimate weddings give you more time to actually talk with your guests, to enjoy their company, and celebrate with them on one of the happiest days of your lives.

2. The Wedding Budget

Let’s be real, money is a huge part of planning and you can save more with an intimate wedding.  For most larger weddings throughout the US one of the biggest things that drives up costs of a wedding day is serving your guests for your day. With fewer guests in attendance at an intimate wedding, that’s less money you’ll have to put towards food as well as beverages, meaning you can use that money elsewhere.

3. Spending your Budget on the Things You Love the Most

Going off of money; one of the most exciting parts of planning an intimate wedding is that you can splurge on vendors or things that you LOVE if you want! Put your money towards the venue of your dreams, or that photographer you’re obsessed with (hopefully me!). Having this extra flexibility with your finances means you get to put your money towards the things you really want to, the things that make your wedding day unique to you.

4. More Unique Venue Options

Another one of my favorite reasons to have an intimate wedding is the amount of options you have when it comes to your venue. With larger scale weddings you’re really confined to a certain style of venue in order to fit all your guests like golf courses, churches, and banquet halls. While there’s nothing wrong with these types of venues and there are unique ones out there, it’s so much easier to find something truly unique and different for an intimate wedding! Just look at The Lytle House, Firehouse Chicago, and Fancesca’s on Chestnut which are all intimate wedding venues located in Chicago. Each with their own distinct style and feel to them, and that doesn’t even scratch the surface of all the incredible venues out there!

5. A Relaxed Wedding Day

Instead of spending your day running around everywhere, bound to your timeline, you get to actually take your time and enjoy all the moments of your intimate wedding day. With fewer people to talk to, take photos with, and wrangle for said photos you can schedule more time into your wedding for the things you really want to do. You can take your time for your wedding portraits with your photographer, have meaningful conversations with your guests, or even just spend a moment as just the two of you as newlyweds where you can relive all the moments from the day and daydream about your future together.

Intimate weddings are some of my favorites to photograph and be a part of, and these 5 reasons only start to describe what makes them so amazing! To see more of my content on intimate weddings head to my blog page, and if you’re looking to have me as your photographer for your own intimate wedding head to my contact page to send me an inquiry.