How to Decorate a Large Venue for a Small Wedding

With more couples across the country opting for a smaller wedding, whether because they wish to reduce the size of their budget, much as they’ve had to do at several points throughout the year, or simply because they have their own private reasons for wanting less guests in attendance, some larger venues are finding themselves having to open up to smaller wedding parties in order to stay competitive in the current wedding market.

This is great news for soon-to-be married couples, as it opens up a whole new set of venues that would have otherwise been outside your price range. Don’t get us wrong, you’re still paying for what you’re getting (in this case, an enormous venue) but in some cases you’ll find yourself paying much less than you may have had to pay several years earlier.

When it comes to decorating a larger venue for a smaller wedding you’ll have to make several alternations in order to ensure the space doesn’t feel too large for its purpose. In particular, make a point to:

Increase the Space Between Tables

When in the banquet hall of your venue it’s important that your tables aren’t too close together, as due to you having a smaller number of guests, placing your tables too close together (at the same distance apart they would typically find themselves at a wedding with a large attendance) can help to expose how much excess space you have around the outside of the hall.

To overcome this, increase the spaces between tables in your banquet hall to spread them out ever so slightly. Whether you’re in an especially large hall, such as the Merchant Taylors banquet hall, or a slightly smaller venue, this will also make it easier for your caterers and servers to move between your tables when serving food and drinks.

Place Flower Displays Away from Walls

In smaller venues (or large venues with a larger attendance) you’ll often find the flower arrangements placed on tables and other areas up against the walls of the venue. If you’re trying to decorate a large venue for a small wedding, however, you’ll want to:

-   Place flower displays on tabletops away from the walls: Moving these tables away from the walls of your venue, even ever so slightly, can help to make the room not feel so large.

-   Position them at the front of tables, rather than the back: Similar to the above point, when your flower displays are placed at the front, rather than the back, of the tables, they’ll help bring the room in and take away from its size.

Hire a Lighting Expert

Knowing how to light a wedding venue is a task that you’ll often be able to hand over to the proposed lighting expert working at the venue itself, but in the case of wanting to decorate a large venue for a small wedding you’d do well to hire an outside expert who can light your wedding or reception venue in a way that emphasises the parts your guests will be in, while ignoring unused parts of any particular room.

In this way you could encourage them to light up your flower arrangements, but not the space behind them (see the above point), or place focus on the dining tables, but not the walls behind the catering area.

Embrace Having Such a Large Venue

Lastly, it should be said that if you’ve chosen to have a large venue for a relatively small wedding you should embrace how large it is, as it’s all a part of what makes your wedding special. Although the above three points are sensible suggestions for not making the venue feel too large, on the whole you shouldn’t actively do anything else to try and reduce how large it feels. After all, do you know anybody else who was lucky enough to get married in such a large, impressive, venue on the same budget as you?

In conclusion, if you’ve booked your small wedding at a large venue there are several ways you can go about decorating the space so it doesn’t feel as large as it is, although on the whole you should embrace how large and impressive it is.