The Anatomy of a Popup Wedding : What is a popup wedding?

Hey y’all! Jessica here, just wanted to give you a quick intro to our guest blogger today! In case you don’t know what a popup wedding is, Maggie of Pop! Wed Co. based in DC will explain pretty much everything you need to know about this huge wedding trend, as well as why it’s becoming SO popular for couples on a budget! Please give Maggie a warm BSB welcome — her personality is just as colorful as her awesome photos!! Take it away, Maggie!
xoxo, Jessica

Hey guys! I’m here today to share some of the awesomeness of popup weddings. They’re a great alternative to event-based weddings and they’re so flexible, I thought you guys would love them! And if you’re planning an event wedding, maybe there’s a takeaway here for you too 🙂

The key difference between a popup wedding and an event wedding is the number of humans and the rental of a venue.

Event weddings happen at a rented venue, where the wedding guests are the only people at the venue and the venue is exclusively used for the wedding. There are no unexpected guests, and the venue has coordinators to make sure everything goes off without a hitch.

Popup weddings center around a sense of adventure. They are smaller weddings, usually around 10 people, and the venue is a public place that the couple loves. Popup weddings are all about the unexpected — the random bystanders cheering for your first kiss, the noises and goings-on of your surroundings, and the sense of authentic adventure are key to the experience of popup weddings.

If you opt for a popup wedding, be ready for anything! The reason adventures are so exciting is because they’re not choreographed — they’re spontaneous and crazy and full of awesome.

Maggie Winters

Planning a popup wedding is like a choose-your-own-adventure game. You can include any wedding traditions that you’re really excited about, but there’s no obligation to keep any traditions at all if you don’t want to.

Finding your venue is the most fun part of planning a popup wedding. Think about places where you and your partner feel awesome together, where you love to go, or in our case, a building that we fell in love with and want to hug. Local parks are always beautiful and usually pretty quiet, but you can also go for places like museums or breweries — if it’s a small business, make sure you ask first! Tell them the details of your wedding (i.e., we’ll be having six guests, no music, and a ten-minute ceremony) so that they don’t think you’re trying to throw a 200-person cocktail party at their place, and see what happens. Most people are friendly and love weddings, so it can be really fun to have your wedding at your favorite coffee shop or brewery.

The same thing goes for all the vendors you hire — be upfront with your wedding plans! From a vendor perspective, there’s a huuuuge difference between providing services for a popup wedding with ten people and an event-type or traditional wedding with 100 people. And luck’s on your side because popup wedding services are frequently less expensive.

Maggie Winters

What about all of the THINGS?

If you’re having a popup wedding, you have the freedom to disregard “wedding details” as much as you’d like, or to add in a few that you’re really excited about. Stressing over every detail of a wedding can be a lot to handle, but grabbing a handful of sparklers for a sparkle-filled wedding exit, or stopping by a local grocery store to grab a bouquet or two is an easy and fun way to add some no-stress prettiness to your wedding.

And if you’re super crafty, try a cool DIY project! Tiny weddings are the best, cause you can make everything small-batch-style. Here are some of my favorite DIY tutorials for popup weddings:

Studio DIY’s paper flower tutorial is amazingly beautiful and would be an awesome bouquet.
A Practical Wedding transformed some grocery store cakes into adorable wedding cakes! So easy and affordable. Plus, they’re seriously cute.
You can always grab a spot on the bus or walk after your wedding ceremony, but if you’re a biking type who loves flowers…this wedding-bike-decoration tutorial from Style Me Pretty is absolutely for you.
And before you bike away into the sunset, plan an awesome exit for some epic photos. Sparklers rock, and so does confetti — Botanical Paper Works shares a DIY tutorial for making biodegradable confetti from seed paper, so toss away and don’t worry about littering!

The most fun part of looking at all these tutorials is… none of them are even remotely required to have an awesome popup wedding. Popups are not about details! But you can sprinkle the details on to your heart’s content.

Maggie Winters

But what do we do after the wedding ceremony?

Short answer: absolutely whatever you want!

Maggie Winters

Our couples celebrate all kinds of ways, from a romantic walk through the city to seeing a Beatles cover band at a dinner theatre with their 15 favorite people. Here are a couple of our favorite ideas:

Have a Wedding Picnic

Because picnics are entirely too fun. Who doesn’t love a good picnic? You can pack picnic baskets or ask everyone to bring their own dish, potluck-style, or even pick up a bunch of food from your favorite restaurant. (And did I mention picnics are amazing for photos?)

Eat at Your Favorite Restaurant

Because it’s your favorite! Make a reservation, mention you’re celebrating your wedding, and you’ll have an amazing time.

Treat Yo’self to A Fancy Dinner

Because you just saved a ton of money by not buying dinner for half the world! Treat yourselves!

Or… Just Hang Out!

Because weddings don’t have to be crazy fancy to be awesome. We’ve had couples who came to town to be married, walked around the city all day seeing sights and whatnot, and then just relaxing after a day filled with excitement.

And that’s pretty much all there is to planning a popup wedding! Like any wedding, the goal is to get married, so anything else awesome that happens is icing on the cake. I hope this gives you guys a good starting place for planning your own popup weddings!