Small & Simple, Non-traditional, Casual Wedding

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Most have a fee - the fee for the park we're using is $25. But if you aren't setting anything up and everyone is standing, sneaking in isn't the end of the world. Our officiant said we should just sneak in and that she does it all the time.

Our guest list is 15 people and that includes our wedding party. It is very non-traditional and will be in a public park in Sooke, BC. We have hired an officiant/celebrant who is writing a ceremony from scratch for us based on interviews with each of us. We are having simple flowers and then having a nice sit down dinner with everyone. We have a friend who will video it for us (I will edit the video to make it special and fancy). We have hired good photographers. We spent most of our money on the dress/photographers/suit/bridal/honeymoon suite. Just remember that small doesn't necessarily mean cheap. Our wedding will probably cost about $15,000 when all is said and done. Depending on where you are wanting to get married, search for elopement packages - you'll find something! I did it all on my own because nothing quite fit my vision.

Can you just get married in a public place without permits etc.. like a public park?? Does anyone know?

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Thanks so much for the recommendation, Ashley. I'm definitely going to call them. We won't have more than 50 people total at our reception, and we weren't looking for anything formal, or elegant, so this sounds pretty perfect! Heehee. I really appreciate the info...

Oh, you're in Whitby?! We went with Oshawa Airport & Golf. They rent for 75/hr and I believe that includes a bartender. It's the cheapest hall we came across, they don't host many weddings because it only holds 80 ppl. It doesn't have that elegant formality that most wedding venues have, but it's still very beautiful, all windows overlooking the beautiful golf course.

I see that you mentioned you are in Whitby, have you looked into the Ajax Convention Centre? They do morning/brunch weddings and tend to be less expensive than the traditional dinner reception wedding. You could hold the ceremony at the lake and then go back to Ajax for brunch or a cocktail hour. They have some many packages with so many options.

View quoted message Yeah I totally understand where you are coming from! Things add up so quickly! And yeah that may be difficult for relatives, maybe a small hall or go camping with everyone? And oh I'm sorry! I hope things work out for you guys!

Small weddings are simple and great. I don't know any blogs abouts it. Yet we did it ourselves. Budget worked out for us of 75 pple in Innisfil and closed end of October.

My MOH had a small intimate wedding this past summer and it was one of the most beautiful weddings ive ever been to. It was 20 people total invited and 10 of us (including bride and groom) were the wedding party. She had it in her backyard and then the 2 dads bbqed together for dinner. They did an ice cream bar for desert and they (bride and geoom) served everyone ice cream themselves. No alcohol and no dancing so it was an early evening, but still was so much fun! Very laid back and relaxing.

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We're about 10 minutes drive from Lake Ontario here in Whitby, Daphne. So we are looking at a few places nearby as possible venues... I'd love to get married by the water, even if Lake Ontario wouldn't be my first choice! Heehee. Anyway, right now "perfectly simple" sounds "perfectly right" to us... Thank you for the link. We'll definitely check it out. I'm glad you and your partner had the intimate wedding you wanted... That's what really matters.

Thanks so much for the link, Sasha. We really appreciate it. We've already bookmarked it, and started saving articles to Evernote, and adding images to Pinterest boards. Heehee. I'm so glad you were able to have a successful, small wedding and found some of their posts, and resources of value. I'm sure it'll be the same for us... Where did you end up having your wedding? Would you mind sharing a few more details in terms of cost, guest list, etc.? Thanks!

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An evening wedding sounds great, Ashley -- and it's cool that it'll be both formal, but, also, non-traditional. I totally get where you're coming from about trying to stay on budget, even when keeping things on that smaller scale. Right now, our guest list is at about 45 people, but, that's not counting significant others for people our age. We're still not sure how we're going to handle that... My fiancé just wants to get married at city hall, and then invite friends and family to a restaurant afterwards, telling them, "Don't buy us any presents... Just celebrate with us afterwards, and pay for your own dinner." Most people our age are fine with that, but, some of my older friends and family in particular find that idea incredibly tacky and inappropriate, practically begging me not to handle things this way... A lot is still up in the air. It's just one more thing (of many) that still needs to be figured out. Thank you for your reply, Ashley. We really appreciate it.

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Thanks so much, Bethany. I hadn't thought to look at Tumblr for that. We're still figuring out the budget, but, it'll be under $2,500 I would think. I've had some ongoing health issues that have limited my hours at work, so we're not in the best financial situation at the moment. It's part of the reason why we may hold off on the wedding until things are better, but, either way -- we still want the wedding to be small, and affordable. We do have a nice backyard, but, it's on a steep incline, so it wouldn't be the best for older relatives to navigate, and we wouldn't want to try to cram more than 20 or 25 people down there for a BBQ or whatever. Heehee. Either way, I appreciate your reply. Thanks again!

We had an intimate wedding with only our immediate family. We did a ceremony by the lake, then dinner at a restaurant. It was perfectly simple.
I know someone who had her wedding here (they have different packages for different size weddings):
https://www.elopeniagara.com

You could always check out intimateweddings.com for ideas.
I had a small wedding and read blog posts on there from other couples' intimate weddings and how they saved money.

We are hosting an evening wedding, it will be a formal event but it has a lot of non-traditional elements. There won't be a sit down dinner, but we have waiters serving nice hors d'oeuvres. We are saving about 10-15 grand compared to what our friends have recently spent on their weddings, but we are still over our budget of $10,000. It's really difficult to keep things on the smaller scale. I'd start with your guestlist and plan from there. We are only inviting Aunts, Uncles, a few select cousins and friends. Which brings us to about 90 guests. We wanted 60.

Personally I haven't seen any blogs on this but maybe check out blogging sites (maybe tumblr?). My advice would be figure out your budget first and then go from there, you can cut costs easily. For example, having your wedding in your backyard where you or your family cooks the meal and have the officiant come and you do everything there. And you can have a little dance there depending on if that's important to you. I saw this at a recent wedding, it was beautiful and cut so many costs.