Microweddings in Central Park
Claire lives in Solihull in the West Midlands, but she has lived in New York for a while and other parts of the USA. She runs a business from home where she helps couples to get married in New York’s Central Park. She has planned over 250 weddings for couples from all over the world, but that majority of her clients are British. She also co-organises the Tiny Weddings Fair, an annual fair aimed at couples planning a small wedding, either close to home or abroad. Claire knows small and intimate weddings well. Here are her ideas about why New York is a great place to take a small group of your nearest and dearest with you for a memorable wedding celebration that lasts several days.
I like the term microwedding which I’ve been hearing quite frequently lately. The reason why I like it is because I finally have a name for the majority of the weddings I am involved in. The weddings I have planned in Central Park range from true elopements ie just the couple at the wedding, through to maybe 50-60 people maximum. The majority of my weddings tend to have 5-15 guests, though. They tend to involve close family and friends; so just the people that the couple knows the best.
The reason why I like the term micro wedding or more commonly all one word microwedding is that it implies quite clearly that the event is a wedding, as we know it, just smaller. Many of these couples are taking all the love and joy and celebration of any wedding, and then shrinking it, maybe even condensing it. They are keeping the ceremony and the festivities but just trimming of the stuff (and dare I say it: the people) they feel they can do without. They might be doing this to turn the focus of the day on themselves as a couple, rather than to extended family, or maybe to reduce the stress and hassle that planning a large wedding often brings.
New York is a popular choice for couples looking to reduce wedding-related hassle, because there’s no need to do any paperwork or ceremony at home. On arrival in New York, you can go to City Hall, pick up your license, wait at least 24 hours, have the ceremony, send the completed license back to City Hall, they register your marriage and then send you your marriage certificate in the mail. It’s that simple!
When organising the Tiny Weddings Fair I have found that there is quite a misconception amongst traditional wedding suppliers that couples keep their guestlist short to keep the costs down. This is just not my experience of this type of wedding. They can spend just as much as a traditional wedding on their dress, flowers and various other parts of the wedding. They’re just keeping their witnesses to the group of people that know them best. And that might keep the costs of the reception down, but doing it abroad obviously brings travel and accommodation costs (although quite often these days the traditional wedding brings accommodation costs, it just tends to be in a town considerably less exciting than New York!).
Couples are not choosing to have a small wedding in New York to keep costs down, they’re doing it partly to turn away from the idea that a wedding is for the extended friends and family and all of their acquaintances. These couples have decided to turn the focus of the wedding day to themselves. When a couple bring their families together for a destination wedding, no matter where it is, it will generally be for at least a few days. This means that the couple get to spend a lot more time with their guests, and the guests really get to know each other and everyone spends some quality time together. This time becomes very memorable when you’re all bonding and enjoying each others’ company somewhere incredible like New York. I find that parties do lots of fun stuff together in the run-up to the wedding day, including things like a bachelorette (hen do) and bachelor (stag) party and maybe the bride and groom have brunch with their respective families on the morning of their wedding. There’s just so much more time to spend with loved ones when your celebration lasts a few days and you haven’t involved a couple of hundred of people!
I write each ceremony with the couples and with these smaller groups, we can mention each guest by name in a ceremony if the couple wish to. Things feel a lot more personal. Quite often, my clients write some personal vows to say to each other something that they might not feel comfortable doing in front of absolutely everyone they know. In many cases, couples who don’t spend time worrying about keeping a large number of guests fed, entertained and happy instead concentrate on making the ceremony, the whole wedding day and indeed the entire trip more meaningful and unique to themselves.
Couples have many reasons why they might choose a microwedding. Sometimes it is because they have a complicated family, sometimes it is that the couple would really hate all that attention on the day. Some are just tired of all the traditional weddings, and want theirs to really stand out and there’s nothing like doing it in the incredible city of New York to make a wedding memorable for everyone involved! Perhaps these couples consider planning a big wedding an unnecessary hassle and excessive stress that they don’t need and wouldn’t enjoy. It certainly seems to be a trend to reduce wedding guest lists, and these microweddings are on the rise. I am all for it!
If you’d like to know more about panning a wedding in Central Park, or other locations in New York, then check out the Wed in Central Park website for more information.
http://www.wedincentralpark.com/
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