How To Style An Intimate Wedding That Still Feels Like You 

We’re gonna get right to it: your intimate wedding can be just as chic as a grandiose wedding with 200+ guests. And as a wedding photographer that travels all throughout the New England area, I can attest from my couples that styling your wedding is not as complicated as Pinterest makes it seem, or let’s be real: how expensive it seems. Take a peek at some of the most beautiful weddings and elopements that I have had the honor of documenting over the last few years that have created a day that is stylish, but also intentional to what matters most to them and learn how you can style your own intimate wedding with meaning too.

What Makes a Wedding Stylish?

For me, a stylish wedding is one that balances style, intention, and meaning to the couple. A backyard dinner with long wooden tables, local flowers, family-style food, and string lights can feel every bit as stylish as an elaborate coastal wedding weekend on the Cape. So can an intimate ceremony followed by cocktails at a restaurant the couple goes to all the time.

I always encourage couples from the moment that they inquire to think about the overall feeling they are creating from not only a gallery perspective, but from the overall experience. Because once you know what you want people to feel when they walk into your wedding, the styling decisions become a whole lot easier.

Why Styling an Intimate Wedding Matters

One of the really cool things about having a smaller wedding is that every part of the celebration becomes a little more noticeable because there aren’t 200 people moving through a huge ballroom. Your guests actually have the chance to notice and experience those details.

I believe the most important idea here is that thoughtful styling is less about filling every available surface with wedding decor and more about creating an environment that supports the experience you want everyone to have.

If your dream is an elevated dinner party where your favorite people spend hours eating, drinking, laughing, and telling stories, design around that.

My favorite dinner party styled weddings include warm lighting, incredible food, comfortable seating, flowers that make the table feel special without blocking everyone’s faces, music that sets the mood, maybe a few bottles of wine that you two love already sitting on the table.

Basically what I’m trying to say is that simple can still feel incredibly special.

How to Style Your Intimate Wedding

1. Start With How You Want the Wedding to Feel

When you think about your wedding day, how are you actually picturing the day to unfold and most importantly, how do YOU want to feel and how do you want your guests to feel?

And this doesn’t need to be all figured out from the get-go, it can be as simple as an aesthetic or just pure joy. Take a peek below at a few feelings that I’ve documented recently. 

Like the Best Dinner Party You’ve Ever Hosted

This is also where having a planner or coordinator can be HUGE. A great planner can take the feeling you’re describing and help translate it into actual decisions about your venue, florals, rentals, lighting, layout, and timeline.

2. Please, Please Think About the Lighting

I could talk about lighting forever. From a photography perspective, it completely changes the way a space feels. And from a human-being-sitting-at-dinner perspective, same thing.

Candlelight, string lights, warm lamps, or an outdoor dinner that starts right around sunset can transform even a simple space into something incredibly inviting and cozy.

You don’t necessarily need an elaborate lighting installation either. Dozens of taper candles running down a table, small lamps scattered throughout a tent or eating outside while the sky slowly changes colors behind everyone will do just fine!

At the end of the day, lighting adds atmosphere and it makes people want to settle in and stay awhile. And yes, it photographs beautifully too.

3. Let Florals Add Color, Texture, and Movement

Florals are one of the easiest ways to completely shift the feeling of a wedding. They can make things playful and colorful, soft and romantic, wild and nature-focused, or clean and understated.

For intimate weddings especially, I love when flowers feel connected to the setting and the season rather than simply filling a checklist of wedding things you’re supposed to have.

Maybe that’s bowls of seasonal flowers running down one long dinner table, a bouquet full of movement, wildflowers from a local farm, something sculptural and dramatic at the ceremony, while everything else stays incredibly simple.

With florals, you don’t have to go huge everywhere. Choose the places where florals are going to make the biggest impact and let them freaking shine there.

4. Don’t Forget the Table & It’s Surroundings

When your wedding involves an intimate dinner, the tablescape becomes a pretty major part of the experience. Linens, candles, flowers, menus, place settings, glassware, and even the way the food is served can all work together to create the atmosphere.

A simple wooden table with beautiful seasonal flowers, linen napkins, candlelight, and an incredible meal can feel ridiculously special. 

One of my favorite weddings that I’ve documented recently included this beautiful vintage plate wall above the fireplace and not only was it a crowd pleaser, it also added so much charm to the styling that this couple had already imagined for their wedding day.

5. Add Details That Tell Us Something About You

These are always my favorite wedding details and it’s not necessarily because they’re the most photogenic pieces of the wedding, although they often are, but because they give the day personality.

• Handwritten notes
• Your grandmother’s jewelry
• A bottle of wine from a place you traveled together
• Custom matchbooks from your favorite bar
• A menu inspired by the trip where you got engaged
• Your dog’s face hidden somewhere on the cocktail napkins because, obviously
• Maybe everyone eats your favorite pizza at 10 p.m
• Maybe you serve oysters because you spend every summer on the coast
• Maybe there’s a stack of Polaroids from the ten years you’ve already spent together sitting near the guest book
• A map showing where you two grew up

Those small choices are what make a wedding start feeling like your wedding instead of simply a beautifully styled event.

6. Stylish Doesn’t Have to Mean Formal

This is probably my favorite misconception to throw out the window. A beautifully designed wedding can still feel completely relaxed. You can have incredible flowers and eat dinner barefoot, wear an unreal outfit and drink beer around a fire later, set a gorgeous table and have everyone pass food family-style, host a thoughtfully planned wedding weekend and still leave plenty of space for people to hang out. 

Those things aren’t opposites. Some of the weddings that feel the most elevated are the ones where all that thoughtfulness is happening quietly in the background. Everything has been considered enough that nobody else has to think about it, and you just get to enjoy the day as it is. 

The Best Wedding Styling Still Leaves Room for the Actual Wedding

At the end of the day, the details should support the experience rather than become the experience.

I want you to notice how beautiful the table looks when you first walk into dinner. And then completely forget about it because your best friend is telling a ridiculous story, your partner is squeezing your hand under the table, and everyone you love is laughing around you.

The most successful wedding styling often looks effortless, even when an incredible amount of thought went into creating it. It gives your celebration personality, creates atmosphere, makes your guests feel cared for, and then it gets out of the freaking way so you can actually live the day.