Why smaller weddings are making a comeback: ‘They want to buy a house’
As the heightened cost of living weighs on Canadian households, some wedding planners and vendors say they’ve noticed a shift with their clients who are scaling back their plans with smaller weddings.
“An average wedding that you would see on Pinterest — that’s more like $50,000 plus, and I think people just don’t have it and aren’t willing to spend that when they’re starting their new chapter as a married couple and don’t want to spend the next 10 years in debt — they want to buy a house,” says Alicia Thurston, CEO of Pop-Up Chapel.
“They’re willing to sacrifice the style of food, a cocktail-style wedding instead of a full sit-down. There’s lots of ways where we’ve found to reduce costs.”
Smaller weddings and “micro” weddings were especially common during the COVID-19 pandemic amid social distancing and restrictions on large gatherings.
The return to the trend this time appears to be fuelled more by couples wanting to cut costs and reprioritize their spending.
This also comes as a tough job market is seeing younger Canadians struggling the most to find work.
The national unemployment rate was measured at 6.6 per cent in May and youth unemployment (aged 15-24) was more than double that figure at 13.4 per cent.
In a TD survey report from October 2025, nearly half of Gen Z participants (47 per cent) said the cost of living was their biggest barrier to reaching their financial goals and more than a third (36 per cent) said their current income isn’t enough to get ahead.
Smaller weddings are, more often than not, going to be less expensive than a much larger one because the number of people determines the size of a venue and scale of services provided for the event.
Wedding photographers Gosia Strzeminska and Norbert Kliszczewski at Ever After Photographers say they’ve noticed the trend happening in real time.
“There’s certainly a lot more backyard weddings and weddings in places that normally wouldn’t necessarily have a wedding,” says Kliszczewski.
“We’re talking about breweries, restaurants that normally wouldn’t, even churches having receptions down below. And we’re finding that a lot of venues are being proactive because they’re seeing that shift towards smaller weddings.”
Cost pressures also mean some wedding invites are being declined, which may result in smaller weddings.
A separate TD survey conducted in April 2026 asked about 1,500 Canadian adults about their spending plans for the summer and weddings were seen as a financial pressure point. Nearly half (48 per cent) of participants who received a summer wedding invitation said cost impacted their decision to attend.
Sixty-four per cent of Gen Z participants said they have either already declined a wedding invitation or were being selective about which weddings to attend this summer.
Many couples who are feeling the pinch are still planning on having a wedding this summer, but are looking to save where they can. At the same time, they are expecting maximum value wherever they are still willing to spend money.
“Couples are more price sensitive than they were before, and they are looking for savings,” says Strzeminska.
“Either it’s when it comes to hours of the coverage or number of photographers for the wedding, when before it was quite often a standard having two photographers for the wedding. It comes down to value and the budgets.”
Strzeminska and Kliszczewski also say that just because more clients are looking to save money, that doesn’t mean they are always looking for the cheapest available options.
They say clients are looking to strike a balance that keeps costs within tight budgets, while also delivering a product or service that will still hold value.
“People are generally being more careful, I think, because of the economic downturn, whether or not it’s affecting them personally, everyone is being very careful with their finances. People are just choosing fewer things,” says Elizabeth Mywaart, CEO of The Pendennis Weddings and Events.
“Gen Zs are happy to splurge, but not on what’s typical, but on things that make them feel really, I guess, ‘seen’ as a couple.”
Mywaart says it is typical for all clients to experience “sticker shock” when planning a wedding because they often cost more than what most couples initially expect. This leads many to cut aspects of their ceremony or reception they originally wanted in order to keep the overall costs within a given budget.
In some cases, that could mean drastically reducing the size of a wedding to keep costs down.
“We actually just did a wedding two weeks ago on a Thursday for 26 people (down from about 180), and they rescheduled their wedding from a large-scale event,” says Mywaart.
“They just kind of went, ‘You know what? This isn’t really something we’re actually excited about. We’d rather put this money elsewhere,’ so they scaled back.”
Mywaart continued: “I think people are (saying), ‘Why are we having a $50,000 wedding when we could buy our dream vehicle, put a down payment on a house, have a baby?'”
Strzeminska and Kliszczewski also happen to be getting married this summer and they have experienced sticker shock during the wedding planning process.
“We did notice that we were quite naive and, even as vendors in the industry, our initial budget of what we thought it was going to cost, it very quickly, we needed to adjust it. We noticed that at the very beginning,” said Kliszczewski.
“So prices have certainly gone up, I think across all the vendors, because of the cost of living increases all throughout …We were like, ‘Oh wow, that’s a lot for flowers!’ But then of course, people, when they chat with us, (they say) ‘That’s a lot for photography.'”
Scaling the size of a wedding or sacrificing some items on a list can come with cost savings and that could also mean making difficult decisions.
Mywaart says because this recent shift for many clients is becoming more normalized, it may be getting easier for some couples to make those decisions.
“I think weddings are generally unaffordable and we do it anyways. And obviously, there’s people getting gifts and some people provide support, but now I think that the narrative has shifted enough that people can talk openly about it,” she says.
“People are aligning their weddings with their values in a way that maybe they just weren’t allowed to before.”
globalnews
