Petite Weddings

This month we spoke to Jane Caterer founder of Petite Weddings, the only UK platform dedicated to elopements and intimate weddings for 2-50 people.

By Sarah Ridgway

Photo Credit: www.veritywestcottphotography.com

HOW LONG HAS PETITE WEDDINGS BEEN GOING? We started Petite Wedding 6 years ago after previously working in investment management as a marketing director. After selling the business, it allowed my husband and I to go off and do something different, we left London for Cornwall and during that time we built Fallen Angel and started Petite Weddings. WHAT’S UNIQUE ABOUT PETITE WEDDINGS? Petite Weddings is the only UK wedding platform focused purely on elopements and intimate weddings and our core market is weddings for 2-50 people, although some of our venues can take a little more than 50. WHAT DOES THE PLATFORM OFFER? Petite Weddings brings together the best small wedding venues and businesses that provide relevant services to couples wanting an intimate wedding. Within those services, we work with wedding planners, photographers, florists, and caterers and many more service providers that share our passion for elopements and intimate weddings. Couples can access this information on our website that’s carefully curated by size of wedding and also by location in the UK. We also have a blog with lots of advice, ideas and tips for couples looking for inspiration. For those that need more of a helping hand or have a particularly complex or ambitious plan, or just don’t know where to start then we can help and guide to find the right solutions for them. Although a lot of couples can use our services to help them find a venue, we can also help assist with the more non-traditional requests such as kayaking or a boat trip to a remote beach, we can help them plug those gaps to create the day that they want. WHAT AREAS DO YOU COVER? We currently cover Cornwall, Cotswolds, Devon, Midlands, Somerset, Yorkshire Dales, and Scotland. We are talking to businesses across the country and will shortly be opening up East Anglia and Dorset areas on our site. Our ambition is to work with the best 100 venues for small weddings and elopements across the UK. It will never be more than

this as we are keen to develop long terms relationships with businesses that provide value to all. We are especially keen to work in the Lancashire and Lake District region as we receive high levels of enquiries for this area, yet we have no business partners here just yet. HAVE YOUR BOOKINGS CHANGED THIS YEAR? An estimated 220,000 weddings were postponed in 2020 due to the pandemic. This time last year when lockdown first happened, we saw a jump of about 50% in our website traffic. At that point last year we worked with 16 wedding venues, now we work with 28. Even though we have increased capacity, our venues are fully booked which leaves us with a bit of a problem, so we are constantly seeking the right business partners to work with in areas where we see demand. Finding the right fit for the platform is essential. WHAT WEDDING TRENDS ARE POPULAR, OR YOU THINK WILL INCREASE IN POPULARITY? Due to the trauma of the lockdown last year a lot of people are telling me this is the perfect opportunity for them to do exactly what they wanted as opposed to what they felt they needed to do. People are walking away from the big weddings and making a smaller wedding a positive choice, rather than it being driven by COVID restrictions. There are many reasons for this ranging from couples seeking a more authentic experience through to some still having concerns about spending life-changing sums of money on a wedding in the current environment and this continues to be a key driver in the wedding market. Equally, we are hearing from lots of couples who are actively choosing to spend more per head and have a really special time, either just as a couple or surrounded by their inner circle of friends and family. We’re seeing wedding styling is more relaxed and fun than ever, e.g. boho wedding dresses, rustic styling and lots of outdoor ceremonies and celebrations. Again, something that may be driven by the austerity of numerous lockdowns. We’re also seeing decadence and luxury woven into plans e.g. long weekend weddings rather than just a wedding day. YOUR BUSINESS SEEMS PERFECT FOR ACCOMMODATING THE RESTRICTIONS OF THE PANDEMIC, HOW WAS LAST YEAR FOR YOU? Actually, it was exceedingly difficult due to most of our venues being fully booked with weddings, we had a whole tsunami of people wanting to explore elopements and smaller weddings, but we just didn’t have the availability. On top of that, we had to stop completely for 4 months in 2020 and 3 months in 2021, so all the businesses we worked with were closed for a third of last year and a quarter of this year. So there has been lots of work helping people replan and rethink their weddings and trying to make something happen at a time when it is possible across the UK. Positively, we have been able to help more couples than ever and the situation has “normalised“ smaller weddings and elopements, which is something we are passionate about! WHAT ADVICE WOULD YOU GIVE COUPLES WHO ARE WANTING TO GET MARRIED THIS YEAR? Get in quickly. Many wedding venues are already near to capacity in 2022 as well as 2021, so if you want a wedding in the next 18 months, book now to avoid disappointment. Also, consider a winter wedding. They have a natural intimacy about them, and they also have some great practical advantages. Venue hire, accommodation and travel costs can be cheaper and provide better value for money, wedding service providers are less busy so you will

Photo Credit: www.veritywestcottphotography.com

get more choice and more of their time and energy, local amenities will be less busy, making your wedding stay more enjoyable and a winter wedding offers you the chance to create a truly unique wedding experience, surrounded by those who are dearest to you. HOW IMPORTANT IS BEING AN ETHICAL AND SUSTAINABLE BUSINESS? It has a significant focus, and regarding trends, we have seen that more people are looking at the carbon footprint of their wedding. Smaller weddings help reduce this as it involves fewer people travelling and less waste, vegan menus and more. It is especially important for us that whatever we build needs to be sustainable. We work with a range of venues and businesses who share our sustainability ethos and have great eco-credentials, we even have one venue that’s re-wilding 30 acres of former farm land to create a totally unique wedding venue, whilst helping the planet. Demand in this area has increased as people now are more conscious, not just with their wedding, but across the board which is encouraging. HOW HAS THE COMPANY GROWN AND EVOLVED OVER THE YEARS? Petite Weddings started 6 years ago with one venue in Cornwall, due to the demand being so high for that venue we expanded and started to seek business partners in Cornwall. As it continued to grow, we moved into other areas of the UK. The business has doubled in size in the last year. Overall the traffic to our site in year one was 10,000 and this year we are tracking it at just below 80,000. So our growth has been accelerated by COVID, but was strong before this too. SOME PEOPLE HAVE A PERCEPTION THAT THE UK IS QUITE LIMITED, WHAT ARE YOUR UNIQUE WEDDING LOCATIONS AND OPTIONS PEOPLE MIGHT NOT BE AWARE WERE AVAILABLE? The UK certainly isn’t limited! In Scotland, you can get married anywhere if the landowner permits you to, so there are some great spots up there due to how relaxed it is. England is not as relaxed. To have a legal wedding you still must have the registry office before you can have a wedding just anywhere you want, although there are still many stunning intimate wedding venues in England that offer indoor and outdoor weddings in licensed premises to choose from. DO YOU HAVE PLANS TO EXPAND INTO OTHER REGIONS? As I said we have a huge demand for weddings in the Lakes and the Lancashire area, and we receive daily requests for elopements and small weddings. Currently we don’t have any business partners in this area so all I can do is point people in the right direction based on my knowledge and understanding of the area and the options that are generally available. This area ticks a lot of boxes for our couples as it’s a place of natural beauty and holds special memories for many. There is also a great hospitality sector in the Lake District, so in theory, we should be able to find lots of venues to work with. Due to the pandemic, there seems to be an awful lot of bigger venues that are currently accommodating the smaller weddings, but are not necessarily committed to this model longer term. This is understandable, but we wouldn’t work with these venues because we are all about long term relationships. We’re looking for like-minded businesses who are committed to hosting small weddings and elopements as part of their business plan and as excited about this as we are! E jane@petiteweddings.co.uk WWW.PETITEWEDDINGS.CO.UK

Below Photo Credit: www.veritywestcottphotography.com