2020 is undoubtedly a year that will go down in history, with the arrival of the global pandemic, and the restrictions it has brought on all our lives. Lockdown restrictions have either seen weddings banned completely, or numbers greatly restricted, forcing thousands of couples to postpone their plans, or reduce the size of their wedding. This has popularised the Micro Wedding - a wedding with less than 20 guests.

There has always been a place in the wedding industry for elopements, with the ‘runaway marriage’ to Gretna Green dating back to 1754. Now of course couples elope to many venues around the country, and indeed the World, and no longer furtively under the cover of nightfall, but never has there been a time when the Micro Wedding has been as popular as it is now. But will this trend continue when all social distancing restrictions are lifted, and we can revert back to our ‘normal lives’, or will couples embrace this new trend and continue to choose a much smaller, intimate wedding…

Many girls dream of the big white wedding, and others just conform to the social norm, but with today’s pressures on our time and finances, is that norm so much further away from reality than it’s ever been. Considering the average age of a first time property buyer is now 34, with higher deposits than ever required, it’s not surprising that couples are reconsidering whether a big wedding is really the best use of their hard earned savings, after all it is just one day.

The other aspect that’s making the Micro Wedding more appealing is the huge amount of planning a big wedding involves. We all have such busy lives, and few couples want to spend the little spare time they have organising a wedding, which can be very stressful, with so many decisions to be made, and so many people to risk upsetting!

Some couples are not comfortable being the centre of attention. If you don’t have an outgoing personality, the thought of having all eyes on you all day, people taking photos when you’re least expecting it, and of course the dreaded speeches, fills many couples with horror! After all, all they actually want to do is marry the ‘love of their life’, but does that really need to come with a big ‘bells & whistles’ event.

Obviously the wedding industry is a huge one, and many people’s livelihoods rely on those big white weddings, including us florists, and I’m sure there will always be a market for the fairytale wedding , but I do believe the Micro Wedding is here to stay, and many more couples will opt for this much simpler intimate way of tying the knot, when social distancing is no longer necessary.

So before you decide which wedding you’d prefer, cast your mind back to the humiliation of Carrie Bradshaw outside the New York City Public Library, when she allowed her designer gown to turn her wedding into a media circus, resulting in her Mr Big calling the whole thing off! Surely that has to be the must see movie for all brides to be…

Let’s raise our glasses to The Rise of the Micro Wedding…!