Gone are the days of impersonal cookie-cutter weddings, which is why this article will talk about tips and tricks for photographing intimate weddings.
While couples get endless inspiration online and certain trends become threads throughout countless weddings, most couples want a personal and unique wedding day.
As a wedding photographer for over a decade, I’ve seen a rise in couples throwing out the rulebook and creating their own dream weddings.
While sometimes the dream wedding means being surrounded by all of your friends and families, for other couples, it’s more about keeping the guest list to a minimum.
Some of my favorite weddings have been intimate weddings, where couples are incredibly intentional about how they spend both their time and money.
Luckily, from a business perspective, photography often still makes the cut of top priorities – but I feel even more inspired to make sure I tell the story of each couple well.
In this article, we’ll talk about what intimate weddings are and how photographing them might be different than standard wedding photography.
I’ll walk you through some key tips for preparing yourself for capturing meaningful images in an intimate environment.
What is an Intimate Wedding?
Intimate weddings are small-scale weddings with a limited number of guests.
Unlike a more traditional wedding, an intimate wedding often has fewer than 50 guests and sometimes fewer than a dozen.
Intimate weddings prioritize a personal atmosphere, celebrating the couple’s special day with their closest friends and family.
Due to the small number of attendees, couples often focus on other priorities that are personally meaningful to them.
Over the years, I’ve noticed a rise in relaxed weddings and breaking from tradition for tradition’s sake.
Being able to shoot documentary-style wedding photography is a great asset if you find yourself in a market where intimate weddings are popular.
Intimate weddings, while smaller in size, aren’t always smaller in budget or length, so after we work through some tips for photographing them we’ll discuss the business approach to intimate weddings.
Preparing to Shoot an Intimate Wedding
The most important aspect of preparing to photograph an intimate wedding is understanding the couple’s vision and expectations.
It’s important to figure out what their priorities are and why they decided on an intimate wedding.
Often, a couple selects an intimate wedding because they want to spend their time or money differently than how a larger wedding would require.
As the photographer, learning their priorities will help you focus your storytelling on what is important to the couple.
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One of the main benefits of an intimate wedding is that you often have more flexibility and freedom for the photography schedule.
Therefore, it’s important to scout the venue and identify locations that you want to utilize for different aspects of photography.
Like any wedding, you’ll want to make sure you plan your timeline and family picture list, and prep your gear.
Sometimes intimate weddings are less heavily planned than larger weddings, but as a photographer you still want to have a plan and a back-up plan for getting great photos.
Building the Client Relationship
Since an intimate wedding is more focused on the couple’s personal desires, it’s important to build a relationship with your client.
You can start building rapport at the initial inquiry meeting, engagement session, or pre-wedding consult.
On the wedding day, your presence might be more noticeable than if there were a lot of wedding guests, so fitting in with the group is important.
Obviously, you should be yourself since that’s likely why the couple hired you, however, it doesn’t hurt to try to take cues from the guests as to the type of vibe the couple desires.
Since you want to familiarize yourself with the priorities of your couple anyway, use that time to build rapport.
Communicate about how you typically work and get a feel for their expectations and preferences as well.
If there are other vendors involved build rapport with them as well because, at an intimate wedding, everything is more tight-knit in general.
Lighting, Composition, and Framing
Like any wedding, you want to focus on nailing your lighting, composition, and framing.
The higher-quality images you can produce by using your professional photography skills, the better.
At an intimate wedding, you will want to master natural lighting techniques since they are less distracting than the use of flash might be in a small group.
Therefore, you’ll want to be adaptable to various lighting situations that you might encounter and be able to shoot in various conditions.
Use artificial light when necessary to creatively enhance your images, but be aware of how it impacts a smaller group.
Using a lot of bulky light modifiers, bounce light, or off-camera flash techniques might not always be appropriate.
You’ll also want to consider when using a drone in your wedding photography will or won’t be appropriate since it can be loud and distracting.
I’m not saying not to use a drone or off-camera flash; I’m just saying be thoughtful about when and how.
Similarly, think about how a smaller group impacts how you might choose your framing and composition.
You can emphasize intimacy through close-up shots and incorporate the setting, environment, or other priorities to enhance the storytelling.
In the next two sections, we’ll talk about the importance of candid moments as well as details in intimate weddings.
As you read through those sections, consider how you might incorporate that information in your composition selections.
Capturing Emotions and Candid Moments
As usual, you’ll want to observe and anticipate key moments where you can capture the intimacy and vulnerability of the wedding.
With a smaller group, your presence will be more noticeable, so you’ll want to find ways to encourage natural interactions between the couple and guests.
I find that you can’t get away with being a fly on the wall but rather need to immerse yourself in the day so that your presence is a natural extension.
Then, everyone will feel more comfortable around you and able to be themselves with their full emotions.
You’ll likely still want some posed group shots and luckily these are often easier to wrangle with a smaller group than at a large wedding.
I still recommend working with your couple ahead of time to put together a shot list for family photos so that you can get a handle on the key relationships prior to the wedding day.
When posing your couples you may want to provide gentle guidance that allows for more natural poses to create a comfortable environment for the couple.
The overall energy of an intimate wedding might be less showy than a large wedding, so you’ll want to approach your couples accordingly.
Setting, Details, Decor, and Ambiance
As I mentioned, you’ll also want to use other storytelling elements, such as the setting and details, to tell the story of the intimate wedding.
You can highlight the unique aspects of the wedding that make it personal by paying attention to small details and decorations.
I find that at more intimate weddings, it seems that each decision was made with care, and most things included were chosen intentionally.
This goes back to the idea of knowing your couple’s priorities and reasons for choosing a smaller wedding.
The mood and ambiance of a wedding are always a great addition to your storytelling, and it’s no different at an intimate wedding.
In fact, it may be more impactful to show the relaxed wedding vibe that the couple created.
For example, many of our couples choose to have an intimate wedding because they’re getting married somewhere ruggedly beautiful.
The location is often a top priority for Colorado weddings.
Therefore, I must capture the beauty of nature to show the power of the chosen setting.
Business Impacts of Intimate Weddings
While, by and large, our biggest weddings often have the biggest budgets, money is definitely not the only motivating factor for a couple to decide on an intimate wedding.
Even if money is a motivating factor, it’s often because the couple wants to choose what their priorities are in how they spend their wedding budget.
As wedding photographers, it’s easy to feel like intimate weddings might not be as good for business when, in reality, we’ve had many couples choose an intimate wedding so that they can spend more on photography.
The point I’m trying to make here is to encourage you not to limit yourself when creating packages for intimate weddings.
As a photographer, you still want to tell a story of the wedding day from beginning to end, and while there might not be as many guests, there is still a story to tell.
You may feel at first that there’s not as much to capture, but once you shift your perspective away from getting all of the traditional shots of a traditional wedding, you can figure out what types of shots you want from an intimate wedding.
For example, we often spend a significant amount of time with our couples capturing portraits somewhere epic.
Instead of photographing a cocktail hour or a huge dance party, we’ll spend those hours hiking up a mountain to photograph the sunset or exploring a field of wildflowers.
You can also find ways to build packages for intimate weddings that add more value to your couples and keep your profits comparable to a larger wedding.
While you might have a package with fewer hours, you can encourage more products like wall art or wedding albums or add a second shooter or videographer.
I love intimate weddings because they are often less stressful for everyone involved, including me, which allows me to focus on pushing myself creatively.
Conclusion of Intimate Wedding Photography Tips
Intimate weddings demand that you capture them authentically.
As a storyteller, you want to avoid generic templates or recipes and instead create images as unique as your couples.
You’ll want to come prepared with knowledge of your client’s priorities and then build rapport with your couple and their guests.
From there, you’ll focus on your lighting and composition, taking into account the unique circumstances of an intimate wedding and using techniques that compliment the day.
Then, you’ll focus on capturing genuine emotions and candid moments by leaning on the relationship that you’ve built with your clients.
And finally, incorporating the setting, details, and ambiance of the day you can tell a story of the vibe of the wedding and the results achieved by the careful planning of your couple.
Intimate weddings can be great for business as well as developing your skills and creativity as a photographer.
While I still love a big party, intimate weddings are great for reminding us what this wedding stuff is all about: the relationship and marriage ahead.
What about you? What’s your ideal wedding size to photograph?
