At Treseren, we know the secret about small, beautiful weddings – those couples choosing to be
selective with their guest list can create a really special and magical experience for themselves and those closest to them.
As we head towards Christmas and New Year, this is a busy time for engagements, so we wanted to bring together all our help and expertise for those newly engaged couples who may be considering a small and intimate Micro Wedding. As small wedding specialists, we have hosted so many magical Micro Weddings that we wanted to share our experience of hosting and what we hear our couples and their guests say about their experience of their Micro Wedding.
1. Choose the right size venue
As a small, intimate venue, we may be biased but a Micro Wedding in a venue that feels ‘just right’ for your numbers is really important. If spaces are too large and really designed for much bigger gatherings, your small numbers for ceremony and reception can look and feel a bit empty. You then start to loose the very special and personal atmosphere that a Micro Wedding with closest family and friends brings. Your venue is your starting point for everything you create in terms of atmosphere, styling and the personal touches you may want to incorporate.
Our setting is very magical, with two acres of secluded gardens and winding pathways leading to our historic Mine Captain’s House – a Georgian gem with stunning architecture. At Treseren, we offer beauty, romance and a sense of occasion, albeit on a smaller scale. Our beautifully elegant and stylish venue offers a special setting to celebrate and create a small wedding with style, where the proportions and atmosphere feel ‘just right’.
The Treseren vibe is relaxed and convivial. We offer a unique blend of five-star service, incredible food and great wines in a home from home atmosphere.
2. Create a wedding experience that is totally bespoke to you
Because Micro Weddings are a relatively new concept, there really are no rules. Many of your guests may not have attended a small wedding and so do not arrive with pre-conceived ideas of how the day will be or should be. That is a wonderful starting point to create a wedding that utterly reflects you as a couple and allows your guests to enjoy a totally new and unique wedding experience with you.
So it really means you can throw out the rule book. For ceremonies, you can create a traditional aisle, but with small numbers other seating arrangements can be conceived, particularly if you only have a handful of guests which would not really lend itself to the traditional aisle. At Treseren, we love helping create beautiful ceremony set ups that are bespoke to each couple and their numbers, for example Meg and Tom’s Micro Wedding on our terrace with their four guests seated ‘in the round’ opposite the Registrar leading the ceremony.
There is usually less formality at a small and intimate wedding – there’s no need for a ‘top table’ or separation from some of your guests. Of course, you can opt for this, but our lovely alternative of our long table which seats 22 people creates a relaxed and convivial atmosphere, usually with our Bride and Groom seated in the middle of all their guests. Some couples prefer to have an even more relaxed eating experience with a barbecue outside in the summer months and no formal dining at all.
Another example where you can change the usual wedding ‘rules’ is with speeches. If you don’t want speeches, don’t have speeches! But if you do want them, go for it. Some people observe the tradition of speeches at the table at the end of the Wedding Breakfast, but as there are no rules, we have seen others gather guests on our terrace or in the gardens and enjoy speeches pre-dinner in a more relaxed setting.
3. Spend more per head but less overall
A small wedding on average costs a lot less than a large wedding. With less people to cater for, opting for a Micro Wedding means that your spend per head can go up, but your overall budget goes down.
Although that doesn’t mean a compromise on quality – in fact we hear our couples telling us that they want a really fantastic menu with locally sourced produce – good champagne and a sense of treating their guests to a fabulous day. If there are not as many guests, then really great hospitality in a beautiful setting can be affordable. With a smaller wedding, you can focus on the details – have amazing private dining for example if food is your thing, and ultimately have a top quality experience for yourselves and your guests.
There’s a reason the Micro wedding trend is really taking hold; it’s because it is a brilliant way to tailor make your wedding day and create a unique experience which doesn’t have to cost the earth, but is all about you and the most important people in your lives.
4. Add Personal Touches
With a small wedding, you can focus on the details and add special touches. Really, anything goes! From the beginning we set out to create beautiful and magical wedding experiences that are unique and personal to the couple. We can truly say that no two weddings at Treseren are the same. We have hosted a garden party with a Great Gatsby vibe, with afternoon tea served on our vintage china with a string quartet playing swing music.
Others love the idea of creating bespoke table settings, perhaps with their own homemade favours placed in the centre. We work with our couples to create the look and feel they would like from simple and understated, to a riot of colour and abundance. We have built up different sets of crockery and cutlery to create bespoke styling, ranging from a clean palette of whites to a beautiful, rustic salt-glazed crockery set which works so well with our gold cutlery. There’s beautiful artisan tealight holders to choose from, or the mis-matched vintage brass candlesticks we have collected, which look stunning with hand-dipped Danish candles in a colour of our couple’s choice. Just add some stunning florals to our vintage long table, and any other personal touches and the setting feels really special.
Beautiful stationary with place names and your menu for private dining can be a really wonderful addition to your table, as well as a keepsake for after your wedding day. We cannot recommend Kati from Scalet Paperie enough, her work includes gold and silver hand foiling and is a stunning finishing touch.
5. Enjoy more time with your guests
The destination wedding is made for a Micro Wedding experience – more time together and a mini escape can lend itself beautifully to a small-scale celebration. We are lucky with our location near the North Cornish Coast, that our couples can enjoy the stunning coastline and time at the beach the day after their wedding with family and friends.
We set out to create a really relaxed wedding experience where couples could retreat and enjoy a celebration over a few days, encompassing the wedding day. At Treseren, a three night wedding weekend, or three night mid-week stay are the main-stay of what we do. Arriving to home-made cake and tea, we then offer a delicious welcome feast, so our couples can gather everybody together and start the weekend as they mean to go on, with great food, wine and atmosphere. Some are bringing their two families together and it’s a chance for everyone to settle in and get to know each other better before the big day.
We have witnessed the joy and the incredible atmosphere that a small wedding creates, with our couples joined by family and friends that mean the most in the world to them. We have witnessed first-hand the real love and sincerity, as well as the fun and laughter that these special, intimate celebrations bring. There’s more time to spend with each person and have meaningful interactions. The day doesn’t have to go past in a whirlwind of hellos, which sometimes is the hallmark of the bigger wedding with friends and relatives that may not have been seen for years.
Our couples love the relaxed nature of their weddings and having a day after their wedding day to relax in the house and gardens, or enjoy the local beaches really makes their whole experience.
If you want to hear more about our Micro Weddings, Emma and Izzy chatted through the Treseren experience with lots of examples of our real weddings and the reveal of our new Cocktail Bar at the November 2020 Guides for Brides Virtual Wedding Fair.
CLICK HERE to see the recording of our live presentation from Treseren.
