In the UK , recent government guidelines for weddings have been restricting the numbers of guests allowed to either 15 or 30. This has sparked a trend for ‘Micro-weddings’ and opened up a whole host of new creative avenues in terms of the typical wedding shots.

While we’re expecting the number of guests to increase again over spring and summer be sure to keep an eye on Gov guidance for weddings and civil ceremonies to see if and when the rules are relaxed again.

On Monday’s announcement about the reopening of the wedding industry, we understand the following will apply:

6 guests permitted from 8th March (ceremony only – to be confirmed)
15 guests permitted from 12th April
30 guests permitted from 17th May
No restrictions from 21st June

*Dates are subject to review

Whether you have 6, 15, 30 or many more guests, after 30 years of working in the wedding industry, we can confirm, smaller weddings don’t take away ANY magic of a wedding day! The opposite is often the case!

It’s usually easier to achieve a romantic, unique & completely relaxed ambience, within a more intimate party size. We’ve adapted our wedding packages to include more options for micro-weddings specifically. If you’re considering tying the knot in 2021, here’s our tips to achieving the perfect micro-wedding & unlimited opportunities for priceless photography.

Be sure to read the entire post and at the bottom you’ll find two wonderful stories from recent couples who both had much smaller weddings than they’d planned.

1. Cause for celebration

After experiencing such a tumultuous year, planning a wedding and formalising your love & commitment, will undoubtedly be the perfect antidote for your nearest and dearest.

Micro weddings offer everyone involved the chance to play a memorable role in an intensely personal and touching day.

Without the large bill often attached to bigger weddings, you can afford to spoil your guests, with more lavish touches throughout the day. Why not check the entire wedding party into an exclusive hotel the night before and after your special day? Or treat guests to a gourmet meal by candlelight in the evening or spa treatments pre or post the day?

2. Be Creative

Smaller weddings permit BIG creative ideas.

Just because the number of guests at the venue(s) are limited, it doesn’t mean anyone needs to miss out on seeing those special wedding moments.

Thanks to technology everyone you’d like to witness your marriage, can still do so. And can play an even more unique part in your special day, in a way you’d may never have considered before.

How about a live stream during the wedding ceremony?

Go one further and have a video wall or projector at the venue, so you can see your virtual guests up on a big screen, still with you, throughout the entire service.

What about a remote reading, after the vows?

Maybe that good friend in Australia who wouldn’t have made it in person anyway, can now be on hand for a personal wedding message on the day? Video calls can be weaved into the wedding toast and speeches.

To ensure your virtual guests can still share the wedding atmosphere, why not send out guest packs?

Spoil them with wedding parcels of mini bottles of champagne, your wedding favours, personal handwritten messages or poems and a slice of the wedding cake?

If you’re getting married at a registry office or a different venue to the reception, make a detour to see a different four guests for a socially distanced chat en-route?

If you have quirky wedding transport, stopping at a memorable or picturesque location, to be greeted by your other guests provides an extra confetti moment. With your photographer on hand to capture some more truly original moments.

3. Locations

Wedding venues can be adapted to still work beautifully, on a smaller scale.

With simple adaptations to a room, like using just half the length and filling the rest with more flowers, means your sense of style is added too, not diminished and rooms feel anything but empty.

It’s an opportunity to do something even more personal.

If you’ve dreamed of walking into a room full of cherry blossom trees covered in fairy lights, use the space to achieve your dream vision.

Here's some of our favourite venues in the North West, that provide stunning intimate settings.

Manchester WEDDING VENUES – city feel

Manchester Hall > View a full wedding at Manchester Hall

Didsbury House Hotel > View a full wedding at Didsbury House Hotel

The Midland Hotel > View a full wedding at Midland Hotel Manchester

Great John Street Hotel > View a full wedding at Great John Street Hotel

Cheshire WEDDING VENUES – countrySIDE feel

Dove Barn > View a full wedding at Dove Barn

OakTree of Peover > View a full wedding at OakTree of Peover

Hyde Bank Farm > View a full wedding at Hyde Bank Farm

Stock Farm > View a full wedding at Stock Farm

Working with several venues across the North West over the last couple of months, everyone seems happy to be more flexible than usual. We’re all working in innovative ways to deliver bespoke requirements.

One venue allowed a couple to have the venue over two days. This meant they could hold an official wedding reception on the first day and then invite a different set of 15 guests to attend an exclusive post-wedding afternoon tea, the day after. Why stop at just one opportunity to make a grand entrance to rapturous applause, when you can have two?!

4. Micro Wedding Photography Examples

Sometimes less is more. It’s true of photography and more so with micro-wedding photography.

While bigger weddings are brilliant, couples can feel they are over in a flash. Having a smaller wedding generally means more relaxed Brides and Grooms and have more time to spend with their guests. It’s an advantage which creates more natural images.

In terms of photography potential, nothing has changed in the way we operate, aside from following the safety procedures to protect our team and your guests.

Even though Ed’s attended hundreds of weddings in his time, capturing the raw emotion & unique story behind every type of wedding day, never fails to inspire Ed with new ideas on how to capture the most perfect and original shots. As the current climate has caused photography to be more flexible, Ed’s found it’s provided him with new ways to flex his creative muscles.

You literally couldn’t ask for a safer pair of (regularly sanitized) hands!

How we’ve adapted our services:

Video Consultations – quick & convenient, we can still discuss everything about the big day with you and get to know you just as well, over the screen.
Virtual site visits – If it’s not possible for us to visit a venue ahead of the day, we can still do extensive planning around the location shots and correct timings. Using tools like Google Earth, we can make sure we know exactly where you need to be to get stunning sunset shots or the stars as they come out.
We can share a few images shortly the ceremony, downloading directly from our cameras and posting straight onto social media with any hashtags you like.
We offer a two-camera setup during ceremony (one camera remotely controlled). So even if it’s just Ed shooting the ceremony, you can still capture the main event from two angles simultaneously and discreetly.
Having fewer guests doesn’t mean you miss out on beautiful group shots. See our recent pictures on Instagram.
We have recently partnered with local video experts to provide an option for video streaming so no one misses out on the event, even if they can’t attend the ceremony in person.

Here’s some examples of what a real micro weddings looks like. Note, never once did we have to ask any of these couples to smile!

Stories from our couples and their experience having a Micro Wedding

Anna & Chris - Manchester Register Office & Ashfield House

As we were rearranging our wedding for the 3rd time due to the constantly changing covid restrictions, we were starting to worry that the magic had been lost from our (not so) big (anymore) day. We’d originally invited about 150 guests, so to have to cut back to 30 and then again to 15 felt pretty heartbreaking at the time. We deeply considered postponing for another whole year, in the hope that we could have all of our guests with us on the other side of the pandemic, but ultimately decided that we just didn’t want to have to wait any longer. If this experience has taught us anything, it’s that you never know what’s around the corner! We just didn’t know what to expect and after years of dreaming of a big flashy wedding, worried it might not feel special enough. We had a long chat with Ed about our concerns and thoughts. He was incredibly understanding and easy to talk to, and had some wonderful ideas. It started to feel possible and exciting again at that point.

We decided to split our celebration into 2 parts. The first, which we had back in October, was the official marriage at Manchester Register Office followed by a meal at Ashfield House in Wigan. My husband and I spent the night before together in Manchester having a meal out at The Ivy and then stayed at a beautiful suite at The Midland Hotel. We figured by that point that tradition was out of the window so took the opportunity to spend some extra time together, knowing there wasn’t going to be a Honeymoon for a while! The next morning, a few guests joined us at the hotel to get ready with the hair & make up artist, as did Ed to take some getting ready photos. It felt every bit as special as I’d hoped and he was able to get all of the morning shots I wanted and more. He then met up with the fellas and captured their pints and the build up to the ceremony beautifully. He was then able to set up cameras from different angles at the Register Office, so managed to negotiate the socially distanced room perfectly. We then went outside for some confetti and group shots, after which we went on a walk around the area to capture a few moments of just the two of us. We felt quite nervous about this at first, but Ed was so relaxed and well composed, we had absolute faith in him. He was clearly well planned and organised, and also open to new ideas as we went along. It wasn’t long until we forgot we were being photographed and started to really enjoy the first few hours of finally being married. Looking back at these pictures now, they are so well captured and warm. You can feel every bit of love in them now that we felt at the time, and they are beautifully and artistically set.

Finally, we met at Ashfield House and had a few more couple and group shots, followed by drinks, speeches and the wedding breakfast. The small room with 7 tables was a far cry from the grand reception we had originally planned, but it felt so much more romantic and intimate than I’d thought possible. It was like being on one large (albeit rather spaced out!) dining table, and there was a strong sense of togetherness. The absence from our closest friends and family which we’d had to endure throughout the lockdowns compounded with the sense of relief from us all that we’d actually managed to finally make it to this point after so many disappointments and changes of plan, and the emotion in the room was tangible. There was barely a dry eye during the speeches, and Ed managed to capture all of this wonderfully. He was professional, unintrusive and kind throughout the entire experience. We felt like we were in safe hands and the pictures themselves exceeded our already high expectations. We are still struggling to choose our favourites for the album as there are so many we love! Every time we go back to look at them, we seem to find something new in them to make us smile. Part 2 of our wedding is booked in December (for now at least!) and we have an evening do with our full original guest list planned. We can’t wait to have Ed back again to capture the party spirit!

Looking back, there’s nothing I’d change about our wedding so far. We would never have planned things the way they turned out, but I’m convinced it was so much better the way it was. I’ve never experienced an atmosphere like it, and our guests agreed it was all the more warm and special. If you’re in a similar situation and are feeling unsure, I can assure you that it’s absolutely possible to have an incredible wedding right now, and we can’t recommend Wedding Days highly enough. The whole team have been flexible and supportive throughout and the stunning pictures speak for themselves. Thank you so much Wedding Days, and best of luck to you, wherever you are on your journey.

Helen & Abey - Bethany Gospel Hall & Pryors Hayes Golf Club

We got married Saturday 3rd October 2020!

It was our original date and we were determined to keep it! The last week leading up to the wedding was difficult and rather a rollercoaster of emotions due to the further restrictions and therefore rearranging plans..again! I had joined a Facebook wedding group for planning ideas and had seen numerous people posting about their day being wonderful despite the restrictions, I found that rather hard to believe! But our day was actually perfect, even though it was the wettest day since 1891 (yes 1891!) and the car broke down as we were about to leave for the venue! It was so lovely, relaxed and intimate! Of course it would be great to be able to fit a few more people in, we narrowed down from 120, so it wasn’t easy, but it was the most incredible day!

Enjoy every single minute of it! You can always have another celebration at a later date, but you can’t go back if you’ve spent the day focussing on the fantasy of how you thought it would be, rather than seeing the perfection of what it is!

Further Advice

For answers to the most frequently asked questions see our regularly updated FAQ page.

Or get in contact now to check availability or just to get some advice before you take the plunge and book a date.

We are lucky enough to get booked up for most summer weddings a year in advance but in a pinch, we just need a few days notice to prepare for a last-minute wedding if your plans had to change at short-notice.

Let’s make 2021 one to remember. Celebrate your love and commitment, despite the guidelines. A micro-wedding can be the ultimate in intimate, stylish and gloriously original!