A Small Intimate Wedding by Michigan Intimate Wedding Photographer: ME+HIM Photography

An intimate wedding is simply a wedding with a smaller guest list. Preferably 50 people or less, but there are ways to make even a bigger guest list an intimate, personal affair. Check out this great guide by Junebug Weddings on  6 Ways to Craft an Intimate Wedding Even With a Large Guest List for more inspiration on how to make your wedding day personal. We’ve also written about How To Have A Wedding Day That is Personal & Well-Lived on our own blog.

Why do we love intimate weddings?

1. Intimate weddings are about the experience of celebrating with those that matter the most to you. Most couples want to make their wedding day special and doing that for 150 people, obviously, costs a lot more than doing that for 50. So an intimate wedding is all about using your wedding budget to make this one day special for the people that matter the most and who have influenced your life. As photographers that only document weddings & couples this is what really inspires us. Photographing the world’s biggest cake made of gold flakes and which has Kanye West hiding inside sounds fun, but we would rather capture epic love and grandma’s beautiful smile than the glitz of decorations. When there are fewer guests we get an opportunity to spend more time getting to know everyone and documenting their interactions. In a larger wedding we are often “lucky” or in “the right place and the right time” to capture something.
2. Intimate weddings are more relaxed and generally more non-traditional than your traditional “I’m inviting everyone I know and all their plus-ones” wedding. We’ve found that when you sit down and talk with your partner about what really matters the most to you both you’ll find that some (or most) of the wedding traditions don’t have any meaning to you. Do you want to get ready together in the same house? Do it! Do you want to have your wedding catered by your favorite restaurant? Yup! Do you want to include a personalized ceremony, like a reverse wedding (that’s where you party first and the ceremony happens at the end)? Make it happen!! We want to document what is special about your love and how you celebrated that on your wedding day, so these personalized touches are what make your wedding day unique.

Kristina and Logan did what was right for them and we loved every minute of it. They wanted to have a large ceremony with the people that are important to them and then celebrate at the reception with their closest friends and family. We love them for it. It was a beautiful day and we were just so proud to be just one small part of it.