MATT + LIZ

This wedding was booked during the middle of the pandemic. With Liz having only a month to plan an intimate wedding, this turned out to be more than perfect. Liz was supposed to get married in Portugal, but with the coronavirus lockdown, they had to make changes and planned a small New Children’s Museum wedding at the heart of Downtown San Diego instead.

The whole celebration lasted about 3 hours with a quick prep at the Embassy Suites by Hilton San Diego Downtown, then a 20-minute ceremony at the beautiful New Children’s Museum park, followed by an intimate long table dinner for 17 people at the Museum’s admin patio.

The ceremony site was made perfect by Cami Robinson’s floral chalk art which was complimented by vines crawling from above the concrete wall. All of their wedding party joined them remotely via Zoom and the dinner table was beautifully decorated by Hostess Haven and Siren Florals. Speeches were done online coming from different places via Zoom and the whole family were able to spend more quality time with each other.

The overall vibe was simple but super elegant and most importantly, intimate. It doesn’t have the drunk people and loud music festive party vibe, but it was more special because family members were able to spend most of their time celebrating and really sharing the day with Matt and Liz on a more intimate level.

If there’s one thing I like about this coronavirus pandemic, it would be how it brought back my love for intimate small weddings. 90% of my clients are big weddings and the biggest wedding I’ve shot was over 2,000 guests where the couple had to rent two floors of the venue.

There’s a certain charm in intimate weddings. It feels more real and is easier to work on. From my experience, intimate weddings tend to be more stylish, since couples were able to spend more on style.

Here’s how I see it:

-It is more real. The couple is more focused on things that matter most which is time they get to spend with their most beloved guests.

-It is cost-efficient. Couples can reallocate most of their budget into small details that mean a lot for us photographers, because it is a major plus for pretty photos.

-It has lesser stress. It is easier to plan, organize, and work on.

-It is more DIY-friendly.

-You have more venue options, from AirBnb to just a random picnic wedding at a public park. Bigger wedding requires bigger venue.

-You get to spend more on quality than quantity.

Let’s face it. With how 2020 unfolded, we have a little bit of uncertainty on what is ahead of us, either financially, options, or both. The goal is to adjust and having an intimate wedding is one of the best ways of doing that. With all honesty, I still believe that weddings don’t have to be big and extravagant to be beautiful. It is still all about that honest to goodness moments that I can capture, those small beautiful details, and the clothes you get to splurge your money on when you know you don’t have to spend tens of thousands of dollars trying to accommodate hundreds of people. You get to focus more on the quality of your wedding rather than quantity which goes a long way for us wedding vendors as well.