Big or intimate wedding: what the lens sees in both
Twenty guests or three hundred, the emotion is the same and the album breathes completely differently. What each format gives you and how I adapt my approach to it.
Lazar Mihajlović
Published: 11 September 2026
It happens that in the same month I photograph a wedding with about twenty guests and a celebration with more than three hundred. The emotion is equally real in both places, but the days resemble each other in almost nothing, so the albums do not look alike either.
If you are torn between a big celebration and a close circle, I cannot decide for you. What I can do is show you what the lens sees in each of those two worlds, so you can make the decision with a clearer picture.
An intimate wedding: time becomes a luxury
At a small wedding everything slows down. There is no hour long queue for congratulations and no three hundred names to call out for the group photographs. That time flows into the most valuable thing of all: long, calm portraits and frames in which nobody is rushing anywhere.
Small weddings also carry a particular density of emotion. When there are twenty people around the table, every one of them is there for a deep reason and you can see it in their eyes. The toasts are more personal, the tears closer, and I have time to devote a frame to each guest individually.
Days like this also open up locations the large format does not allow. With twenty guests the ceremony can be on a meadow you have to walk to, or in the yard of a family house. The lens loves places that mean something.
A big wedding: energy that cannot be faked
A big wedding, on the other hand, is a wave. A circle dance that takes over half the room, singing you can hear from the car park. Three generations of a family together, often for the first time in many years. No small gathering can produce that much energy, and in photographs you feel it immediately, without explanation.
A big day also demands a different craft. The timeline is denser and there are more family combinations, so organisation counts as much as an eye. In return, the documentary opportunities are endless: among three hundred faces something worth a frame is always happening somewhere.
At big weddings I pay particular attention to the parents. In that sea of faces their reactions are the easiest to lose, and they are the ones living the day most deeply. A frame of a father quietly wiping his eye while the room is jumping is worth as much as the finest portrait.
The same approach, a different rhythm
My approach does not change: documentary coverage of the day and portraits without stiff posing. The rhythm changes. At an intimate wedding I work more quietly and more slowly, more like a guest with a camera than a hired crew. At a big wedding I am constantly moving, anticipating where the next moment will happen and trying to get there before it does.
The coverage that makes sense differs too. A smaller gathering usually means a simpler timeline, a big day asks for more hours on location. I wrote about how that gets sized in the piece on how many hours of photography you really need.
There is no correct number of guests
Around here big weddings are loved, and that is a part of the culture I sincerely respect. A celebration half the town comes to has its own strength and its own beauty. At the same time, more and more couples choose a close circle and a calmer day, and I understand that just as well.
A day is not measured by the number of chairs but by the feeling you walk away with. In the gallery you will find different stories, so compare the atmosphere of the albums. Choose the format in which you will be yourselves, the lens recognises and follows everything else. Couples often tell me, by the way, that they think far less about the size of the celebration after the wedding than they did before it. What stays with them is the day, the people and the feeling.
Lazar Mihajlović Photography
Whatever day you are planning, it is worth telling in full
Send me the date, the location and a rough number of guests. I will honestly suggest the coverage that suits that particular day best.
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