Want to bring an intimate vibe to your big wedding day? Here’s how!
Your wedding doesn’t have to be a guest list of less than 50 to have that intimate, close-knit, everyone-is-connected feeling. You can bring that same vibe to your wedding even if your guest list is at 200 and counting, here’s how!
Build up Excitement Beforehand
First things first, you can’t wait until the exact day of your wedding to make that close intimate, everyone-is-connected vibe happen! You have to set your intention beforehand so you can build up the excitement! The days leading to your wedding will be exciting and buzzworthy. You’ll be on that wedding planning high. There will be heaps of pre-wedding events, fittings, and meet-ups with your wedding party. You and your inner circle will feel closer than ever before.
But what about the rest of your guests? The ones who are not in your wedding party. Guests who are coming in from out of town, and guests who might not be able to attend every one of your pre-wedding events? How are you connecting to them in the days leading up to your wedding? How are you connecting them to your other guests? And how are you going to make them feel that at-home intimate vibe when your wedding day arrives?
Introduce Your Guests Ahead of Time
Small talk is a major buzz kill! Nobody wants to bump elbows at your wedding and chit-chat about the weather while they order a signature cocktail by the bar. All the while waiting for the moment to make their getaway. It’s not exactly the intimate vibe you were hoping for. Meaningful conversations come from connections. Building that into the experience for your wedding guests can happen by introducing them ahead of time! It’s kind of what we do here. Through your Guestie event, each of your guests will have their own profile that openly displays their connection to you.
Inside your Guestie event, your guests can be introduced to each other, ahead of your wedding day. All while also seeing how everyone is connected to you and your wedding day! And to skip the small talk, they can play the name game, access your message board, and receive text alerts about important information & changes regarding your wedding. It kind of makes them your wedding day VIPs! Can you imagine a sea full of guests walking into your wedding, already connected? It doesn’t get much more intimate and personal than that!
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Make Every Touch Point Personal
When it comes to your wedding budget, it’s a constant game of moving numbers around from one column to another. All while asking yourself what’s most important. You might be looking at your budget and asking yourself if you “really need” that welcome sign. Or if the personalized bar sign with the fun names of your signature drinks (after your fur babies of course!) is “that important”. Personal touches like your wedding day signage are everything when it comes to your guest’s experience.
They are touch points that guide your guests through your wedding day. All while also making them feel connected to you, but most importantly to each other. They are also great places to gather for your guests to engage in conversation! “Hey did you see they named their signature drink after Barkley”? The goal for making your big wedding day feel intimate is to bring everyone together beyond the small talk. So including those personal touch points in your budget definitely matter. We’re not saying to go for broke with your budget. We always want our couples to do things in a way that makes sense for them while keeping true to who they are. All we’re saying is, if personal touch points were already a question mark in your budget, don’t count them out just yet!
Ask Their Advice
The big details of your day are 100% between you, your partner, and parents who are financially contributing to your wedding. But friends and family just love to give advice! An easy way to ask for their feedback and advice, while keeping the bigger details of your day sacred, is to ask for their feedback on song requests! This is another easy connection tool featured in your Guestie account. Music has a major impact on the vibes of your celebration and will be included in each element of your day. From ceremony to cocktail hour, reception, and after-party, music will be there to enhance the mood and experience.
An easy way to keep your guests connected, while bringing them together for a close, intimate vibe, is to ask for their song requests! You can make it fun by breaking it up into different categories. Like “what song should we cut the cake too”? Or, “We want to see you on the dance floor after dinner! What song is guaranteed to get you up and moving”? Once your guests have submitted their song requests through your Guestie event, you can pass them on to your DJ with just a few clicks. And if you really want to take that intimate vibe and connection a step further, you can have your DJ shout out your guest’s name right before the drops their track!
Your Decor
An intimate wedding day has a very specific feeling in the decor department. In fact, the term “intimate wedding” probably paints a very specific picture in your mind. You might be imagining low lighting and candles in a deeply romantic setting and heaps of lush florals. The decor of your wedding day evokes the senses of you and your guests to create a full wedding day experience. While the majority of your decor is largely visual, there’s also an aspect of texture in your florals, linens, draping, and attire.
To bring everyone together at your big wedding day while creating that intimate feeling, you very much need to lean into those elements. This is where we sing the praises of hiring an amazing wedding planner who can also help you design your space! Having a big space with an extensive guest list doesn’t automatically mean that everything will be open, airy, and impersonal. You can still bring everyone together by carefully designing your space with the use of draping, thoughtfully designed dividers, and floor-height floral arrangements. All of these elements work together to create an inviting, welcoming feeling for those VIP guests of yours!
Want your wedding to be the best party you’ve ever hosted?
Click here for a full list of features & create your account today!
Put Your Guests on Display
Not everyone likes to be “called out” by hearing their name over a microphone and then prompted to come to the dance floor. We totally get that. You can bring your guests together for that intimate vibe in a much less public way! For this idea, we are leaning heavily into nostalgia with the use of Polaroid or Instamax cameras! You can leave these fun palm-sized cameras on each table, or at your welcome table with a sign that prompts your guests to document the night.
To bring this idea together, you’ll also want a grid or line with “clothes pins” so your guests can display their footage as it’s captured throughout the night. This is an interactive way for your guests to be involved in your wedding, while lending a hand to the decor, AND creating a personal touchpoint! It highlights all the important components for creating a close intimate vibe among the guests at your wedding and, if we’re being honest, we’re kind of obsessed with it! At the end of the night you can have your planner put the polaroids aside to add to your guest book. Or you can mail them to each of your guests along with your thank you cards!
Seating Matters
Your wedding reception is basically two components, your dinner service, and dancing! Before you get to the part where the dance floor is lit and you and your college friends are all singing along to your favorite Taylor Swift song, your guests have to continue to feel that intimate connection you’ve been building on since before your wedding. The seating at your dinner service is a massively important part of that! The arrangements of your tables should lend themselves to an amazing dinner experience, and that includes easy access to seating, comfort, navigation, and whether or not they are set up for conversation!
Those towering floral arrangements are gorgeous, but not when they are blocking the view of the guests sitting across from each other. Ask yourself if your guests will feel closed off from each other with the seating layout you are looking at or if they will easily be able to ask each other to pass the salt while chatting about the fun entertainment at your cocktail hour.
Are the chairs easy to slide in and out or are they clunky and only serve the purpose of being aesthetically pleasing? What about what’s actually laid out on the table? Will your guests feel welcomed with fun activities that await them at their table? Or will they be greeted by personal photos of you and your partner as your table numbers? We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again, every single touch point and piece of decor lends itself to the experience your guests will have at your wedding!
