As they plan their weddings, many future brides and grooms are thinking small. During the Covid-19 pandemic, microweddings—ceremonies with 50 or fewer guests—exploded in popularity for obvious reasons. But when governments lifted restrictions on travel and in-person contact, microweddings didn’t go away. They became trendy instead.
Nearly 60 percent of currently engaged couples and 48 percent of all couples are considering hosting a microwedding, according to a recent survey by wedding planning company The Knot. Weddings shrunk from an average size of 131 people in 2019 to 116 people in 2024, according to another The Knot survey. The search term “micro wedding” also just hit an all-time high on Google.
Sarah Klingman, founder of event planner booking platform Mostest, says that while microweddings did exist before 2020, the “big pandemic pivot” helped more couples realize they’d prefer “a smaller gathering, even when a large one is in budget or in scope.”
Of course, that doesn’t mean 300-person weddings are a thing of the past. “I still have a lot of big parties,” says longtime event planner and Madison Events founder Lauren Grafer Schweibold. Some people “were really, really ready to party” when Covid-19 restrictions lifted, she adds. Plus, after surveying more than 6,000 couples who plan to get married in 2025, wedding registry and planning platform Zola determined that microweddings may be more popular in theory than they are in practice. While the couples ranked small guest lists as one of 2025’s top wedding trends, only six percent say their wedding will have fewer than 50 attendees, per Zola’s survey.
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Still, founders in the wedding space say that microweddings pack quite the punch for vendors and venues alike. “Simply said,” Klingman adds, “the industry is not built for it.” As interest in small-scale nuptials grows, here’s how professional services are adapting to deliver precisely what couples want.
Shifting vendor and planner business models
Event professionals typically price their services as a percentage of the total event spend, according to Klingman. “The microwedding trend has completely flipped that on its head,” she says, because even a “luxury microwedding” has a lower budget than a larger celebration. Weddings with 150 to 200 guests currently cost an average of $45,700, while those with 20 to 50 guests cost around $18,000, per Zola.
Many vendors and event planners are now adding a la carte options, Klingman says, to ensure they can earn consistent income from microwedding clients. Schweibold adds that survival is “really about pivoting and being creative with your outlook.” She says she’s seen caterers adapt to smaller guest lists by offering “a four or five course tasting menu with wine pairing” instead of the usual appetizer, entree, and dessert.
