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Let me tell you how We Do Weddings was born.

My husband got dramatically ill just before our wedding. Not “a bit under the weather” ill. Properly, seriously, suddenly ill, the kind that reshapes plans and life, fast. Our big day got scaled back overnight. The guest list shrank  to twenty of our nearest and dearest, gathered in our garden.

And here’s the thing I didn’t expect: it was fabulous.

Not in spite of being small. Not as a consolation prize. Genuinely, completely, unapologetically fabulous. Twenty people who truly loved us, a garden, and the two of us actually present in the moment instead of working a room. Every single person there felt the full weight of it. So did we.

That experience didn’t just change how I felt about our wedding. It changed my entire career. It showed me, from the inside, that the size of a celebration has absolutely nothing to do with its significance. And it planted the seed for everything We Do Weddings has become.

Now, 350+ weddings later, I’ve delivered ceremonies with only the couple present,  to full productions with a guest list the population of small country.  

May I tell you what I’ve learnt?

Somewhere along the way, weddings became a statement. Not just about the couple getting married, but about their values, their finances, their priorities, their relationship with their families, their environmental conscience, their Instagram aesthetic, and approximately forty-seven other things that have nothing to do with the actual act of being married.

Big wedding people get told they’re wasteful, performative, or caving to societal pressure.

Small wedding people get told they’re cheap, anti-social, or that they’ll regret it.

And somehow, everyone has an opinion. Your aunt, twice removed. Your colleagues. The strangers in the comments section. 

Here’s mine, for what it’s worth: there is no universally correct way to get married. There is only what is correct for you. And I mean YOU. Not your mother, not your Instagram followers, not whoever wrote that viral think-piece about why micro weddings are more authentic.

What I’ve actually learned from 350+ weddings

I’ve stood at the front of intimate garden ceremonies with ten people watching, and I’ve stood in grand ballrooms with hundreds. I’ve officiated barefoot on riverbanks and in full air-conditioned splendour. I’ve done Tuesday morning signings with the couple still in their work clothes, and I’ve done black-tie Saturday evenings where the florals alone cost more than my first car.

And here is what I know to be true across all of them:

The size of a wedding does not determine the size of the love.

It doesn’t determine how seriously a couple takes their commitment. It doesn’t determine how meaningful the ceremony is. It doesn’t determine how long the marriage will last.

What does matter, every single time, regardless of guest count, is whether the day feels like them. Whether the choices were their own. Whether they arrived at their wedding feeling excited rather than railroaded. Whether the ceremony was written for them, not assembled from a generic template. Whether they actually enjoyed the whole experience.  The planning and the day itself.

I’ve seen 180-person weddings that felt deeply personal and intimate in spirit. I’ve seen ten-person weddings that felt obligatory and joyless because nobody involved brought any vibe. Guest count is a number. It’s not a feeling.

The case for going big. If big is your thing

Let me be clear: I love a big wedding. I love the energy in a room when 150 people who all love the same two people are gathered in one place. I love the moment the doors open and the music swells and the entire room rises. I love the toasts that go slightly too long but are so heartfelt nobody minds. I love the dancing that starts too early and ends too late.

If you’ve always pictured your wedding as an Event with a capital E, if you want the full production, the big dress, the long table, the band, the whole thing, then do exactly that. Don’t let anyone make you feel frivolous or extravagant for wanting what you want. A wedding that celebrates your relationship in a way that feels true to you is never wrong.

What I would say: make sure it’s your big wedding, not the one you felt you had to have. There’s a meaningful difference between a couple who genuinely wants 180 people and has planned every detail with joy, and a couple who started at 40 guests and said yes to every addition until they ended up at 180 feeling vaguely overwhelmed. One of those is a celebration. The other is a source of Sunday-night dread that deserves a proper conversation before the deposits are paid.

The case for going small. If small is your thing

And equally: I love a small wedding. I love the intimacy of ten faces all turned toward two people who are about to say something true and unrehearsed. I love the way small ceremonies slow down. Nobody is looking at their watch. Nobody is whispering to their neighbour. The room is so small and the moment is so big that everyone present feels the full weight of it.

I’ve had guests at micro weddings tell me afterwards it was the most moving ceremony they’d ever attended because the whole set up felt true to the couple involved.

If you want twenty people or five or just the two of you, that is a completely legitimate, completely wonderful, completely grown-up decision. You are not short-changing yourself. You are not doing it wrong. You are not going to wake up one day and wish you’d invited your entire contact list. (Far fewer people regret going small than you’d think. And far fewer than the people who went big and wished they hadn’t.)

What I would say: make sure it’s your small wedding too. Chosen freely, not chosen by default. A micro wedding that two people genuinely wanted is magical. A micro wedding where one partner quietly capitulated while secretly devastated, that’s a different conversation, and one worth having well before the day.

The question I actually want you to ask

Not: “How many guests should we have?”

Not: “What do people expect of us?”

But: “If we stripped away every external expectation: family pressure, social norms, what we think we’re supposed to want, what would we actually choose?”

That question, honestly answered, will tell you everything.

Some couples answer it and realise they do want the big celebration, the full gathering of everyone who has ever loved them! Others answer it and realise they want something quiet and close. Some realise they want something in between: meaningful but not massive, personal but not private.

All of those are right answers. Every single one.

Here’s what never changes

However you choose to celebrate: big, small, somewhere in between, in a ballgown, in jeans, in a marquee, in your back garden, with a hundred people or with two witnesses, when I sign your marriage register and hand you your marriage certificate, you are exactly as married as every other couple I have ever stood up for.

Same legal weight. Same commitment. Same document. Same level of official.

The marriage doesn’t know how many people watched it happen.

I learned that in my own garden, twenty guests, the day my big plans became small ones and turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to us. I’ve seen it confirmed at every single wedding since.

What the day knows, what you will know, standing there, is whether it felt true to you. Whether the choices you made were yours. Whether, at the end of it, you looked at the person next to you and thought: yes. This. Exactly… this.

That’s the only metric that matters to me. And after 350+ weddings, I’m fairly confident it’s the only one that matters at all.