A Small Wedding at Home Is One of the Best Decisions to Make

Whether you are having your wedding during COVID or are simply interested in getting married at home, this sweet event is filled with ideas. A backyard wedding can be both special and meaningful as you are surrounded by those closest to you. This micro wedding is filled with inspiration for those who crave a more intimate event.

Why have a small wedding at home?

There are lots of reasons to have an intimate home wedding. Some couples crave simplicity and chose to have a wedding at home. COVID also had couples scrambling for micro wedding venues as dates changed and events were postponed.

Also, many couples are searching for inexpensive wedding locations. Therefore, if you want to keep it budget-friendly, using small wedding ideas can help stretch your finances.

Plus, home wedding decorations can be so special as you get married in a familiar space. Using a place that is already meaningful can add a unique element to your big day.

Thoughts on Getting Married at Home

Matt and Katharine had their wedding during COVID, which wasn’t without challenges. Although, the result of their backyard wedding is beautiful. Love and emotion are woven throughout their photos, and their backyard wedding decorations are so clever.

From cute signage to showers of champagne and colorful paper—at separate times—there is a plethora of inspiration ahead. If you’re pondering a micro event, adding a virtual wedding element helps include those who can’t attend.

Before we show you all of the lovely small backyard wedding ceremony ideas, we caught up with the couple. Hear their story of the trials and triumphs of having a wedding during COVID.

Small Wedding at Home During Covid

What plans did you change to have your wedding during COVID?

We had originally planned to get married at Saint Luke’s Cathedral in Portland, ME with the reception at the Black Point Inn, just outside of Portland. We had invited around 150 friends and family to help us celebrate.

When it became clear that it wouldn’t be safe to host a gathering of that size, we postponed the reception until next fall. We chose to get married in our backyard with just our immediate family in attendance.

However, we also had to reschedule our backyard wedding. The remnants of Hurricane Laura came through the DC area on the day of the rescheduled wedding. Fortunately, our family was mostly local and able to adjust on the fly.

Why did you decide to have a small wedding at home?

We are both in our mid-thirties and knew we had found the right person. We were eager to start our married life together. Waiting a year or more to get married just didn’t work for us.

Small Wedding at Home During Covid

How did your vendors react to the changes?

In general, our vendors were very accomodating. We were able to move all of our vendors to the new date next fall without too much trouble.

We had to pay a small amount in additional fees to switch to the new date. Otherwise rescheduling our vendors was a reasonably painless process.

What precautions did you take to have a wedding during COVID?

The main precaution we took was to limit the number of people in attendance. We invited only immediate family to make sure we could maintain plenty of space between everyone. Also, we didn’t have any vendors other than Adam Mason Photography.

We had our fathers marry us. For refreshments, we set out a few tubs with drinks and a cooler with ice cream bars. We also held the wedding outside and everyone wore masks unless they were more than six feet apart.

We even stood six feet apart for the family photos, which made for some fun and unique portraits. Scaling down so much allowed our families to relax in our backyard without being concerned about the risk of leaving their respective bubbles.

Small Wedding at Home During Covid

What were the pros/cons of having a micro wedding?

The downside of having a small wedding was really just that we couldn’t have all of our family and friends with us. Instead, we invited everyone we couldn’t invite to the backyard wedding to join us by Zoom. We recorded the Zoom call, which gave us a really unique memento of our wedding day.

Seeing Katharine’s niece making faces at the screen as she watched us get married was truly epic! Otherwise, having a small backyard wedding was pretty much all positives for us.

It gave us the flexibility to reschedule at the last minute when the weather wouldn’t allow us to be outside. It allowed us to share a really fun intimate day with our families, and we were able to get so many amazing photos in our backyard!

What did you learn by having to switch to getting married at home?

We had originally gone back and forth on whether we wanted a small or large wedding. Katharine preferred a small wedding, and Matt wanted a large wedding.

We ultimately decided on a large wedding so we could invite everyone that we wanted to share the day with us. Although we realized that we really enjoyed a small intimate wedding.

We’re still excited to have a larger reception next fall (assuming the pandemic is over by then). It was amazing being able to get married in our backyard. We also got engaged in our backyard, so getting married there as well seemed really fitting.

Small Wedding at Home During Covid

What are you doing about a honeymoon?

Luckily for us, we hadn’t decided on a honeymoon destination when everything started shutting down for the pandemic. Once we picked the date for our backyard wedding, we decided we would take a road trip around Virginia. This satisfied our desire to go on an adventure together while minimizing our potential risk.

We spent a few days living in a treehouse at Primland in southwest Virginia. We then stayed at a Bed and Breakfast in Cape Charles for a few days to enjoy the beach. It was actually our first road trip together, and we had a wonderful time!

Cute Critters at this Backyard Wedding

Oh, and one more thing! You’ll notice a few cute critters making an appearance in this adorable backyard wedding. Seeing them may leave you wondering, but don’t worry—we have answers!

Be sure to notice the rainbow elephant, Norman, and wooden squirrel, Squirtel. Here’s the story in Matt’s words.

I won Norman for Katharine at the local fair the first time I visited her hometown. It helped that the winner of the game we were playing got to pick the prize, and we were the only ones playing. He’s become something of the house mascot.

We got Squirtel at a local gardening store. Katharine is a great gardener, so when we bought our house we had to get all the gardening supplies. My contribution to the exercise was Squirtel.

Norman is pretty lazy and mostly just hangs out on our couch. Squirtel likes to get into trouble and find new hiding spots to surprise Katharine.

We love adorable tidbits like this. They characterize the nuances of a relationship and show how fun and playful this couple is. Enjoy!