The Wedding Weekend: How to Plan an Intimate Canadian Wedding Nobody Wants to Leave

What if your wedding started before anyone put on a suit or dress?

Everyone wakes up on the same property. Someone is making coffee. Half the group is still in pyjamas. Breakfast is outside. There are people playing cornhole on the lawn by 10 a.m., somebody has already jumped into the lake and, technically, the wedding hasn't even started yet.

That's the kind of wedding I want to photograph.

If you're planning an intimate wedding in Canada with fewer than 50 guests, I think one of the biggest opportunities is to stop treating it like a smaller version of a traditional wedding.

Make it a weekend.

You have 20, 30 or 40 of your favourite people in one place. Some of them have travelled across the country to be there. When is that exact group of people ever going to be together again?

Give them more than a ceremony and dinner.

Friday: Everyone Arrives

I wouldn't start the weekend with a formal rehearsal dinner where everyone immediately has assigned seats.

Give people somewhere to land.

If you're renting a private property, have drinks waiting when everyone arrives. Put music on. Order an unreasonable amount of pizza. Have local wine and beer sitting in ice buckets. Set up lawn games before anyone gets there.

Cornhole. Giant Jenga. Bocce. Croquet. Horseshoes. Badminton.

And then add something nobody knew was coming.

Maybe a magician starts wandering through the party doing close-up magic. Not a stage show where everyone has to sit quietly and watch — someone who moves through the crowd and completely catches people off guard.

Hire a caricature artist. Have a tarot reader tucked into a little corner. Bring in a temporary tattoo artist. Set up karaoke once it gets dark. Have an ice cream truck suddenly pull onto the property.

You want at least one moment where everyone thinks, wait, we're doing this?

That's the point.

The first night should break down the awkwardness between groups who haven't met before. By the time everyone wakes up Saturday, your college friends know your cousins, your parents have met everyone properly and nobody is making small talk for the first time at your cocktail hour.

From a photography perspective, I'd also consider adding a few hours of welcome-party coverage. It gives you photographs of people in a completely different setting than the wedding itself, without ceremony timelines or formal clothing dictating what happens.

Saturday Morning: Don't Start With Hair and Makeup

Wedding morning can be so much better than everyone disappearing into separate rooms at 8 a.m.

Have breakfast first.

One enormous table. Coffee. Mimosas. Fruit. Pancakes. Pastries. Whatever everyone actually wants to eat.

Nobody is dressed up yet. Nobody is worried about where they're supposed to stand. It's just breakfast with the people who came to watch you get married.

Then go do something.

If you're beside a lake, take out paddleboards and kayaks. Go for a swim. Take the boat out for an hour. Have a dock-jumping competition.

If you're on a ranch, go for a walk, hang around the horses or organize ridiculous field games.

If you're somewhere with a pool, this is your pool party.

You could even make Saturday morning a full-on Wedding Field Day.

Split everyone into teams. Sack races. Three-legged race. Tug-of-war. Water balloons. Relay races. Bocce tournament. Badminton.

Winner gets a completely ridiculous trophy that you bought for $20 and had engraved.

You're allowed to be adults who play.

Weddings can become so focused on making everything beautiful that people forget they're also supposed to be fun.

And these are exactly the parts I'd want to photograph: your dad taking tug-of-war far too seriously, somebody's grandmother playing bocce, your wedding party jumping off a dock together and everyone lying around afterward eating watermelon in their swimsuits.

Those photographs tell me more about your people than another hour of posed wedding-party portraits ever could.

Then Everyone Disappears to Get Ready

Around noon, things shift.

People shower. Music changes. Flowers arrive. Hair and makeup starts. Clothes come out.

Now the wedding actually begins to feel like a wedding.

Because everyone spent the morning together, there's also less pressure to manufacture excitement in the getting-ready photographs. The day already has momentum.

I'd photograph the details, people getting ready, parents wandering in and out, champagne being opened and everything slowly becoming a little more serious.

And then I'd build in something I think more intimate weddings should consider:

Have Cocktails Before the Ceremony

Yes, before.

Your guests already know you're getting married.

There's no rule saying they need to sit silently in rows for 45 minutes waiting for you to appear.

Open the bar early.

Have a musician playing. Serve one signature cocktail and something non-alcoholic. Put out a few small bites. Let everyone talk.

You could have lawn games still running in another part of the property.

Then when it's time for the ceremony, someone rings an old dinner bell, a musician changes songs or your coordinator starts bringing everyone over.

The energy changes naturally.

Now everyone is present.

4:30 PM: Get Married

This part doesn't need twelve additions.

Let it be the ceremony.

Thirty chairs. Flowers. Mountains, lake, field, vineyard or forest behind you.

Your people close enough that you can actually see their faces.

Write your own vows if that feels right. Have someone important do a reading. Include your dog. Have your grandparents sign as witnesses.

Then get married.

And immediately afterward?

Don't disappear for two hours of photographs.

5:00 PM: Give Everyone Something to Do

This is where cocktail hour gets good.

Bring the magician back.

Open an oyster bar.

Have a champagne tower.

Set up an espresso martini station.

Bring in a cocktail cart.

Have someone shucking oysters.

Hire a saxophonist.

Have a live painter working somewhere guests can watch.

Bring out Polaroid cameras and start a guest book.

Put disposable cameras around the property.

Keep the lawn games going.

Have a caricature artist drawing everyone in formalwear.

If there's water nearby, take a boat out.

And this is when I'd steal you for photographs for small pockets of time rather than one giant portrait block.

Ten minutes here. Fifteen minutes there.

You get to experience your cocktail hour and I get to chase the best light as it changes.

6:30 PM: One Really Long Dinner

For fewer than 50 people, I'd seriously consider one table.

Put it outside if the weather and venue allow.

Flowers down the entire centre. Candles everywhere. Good wine already on the table. Family-style food coming out in waves.

And don't rush it.

Let dinner take two hours.

People stand up and tell stories without necessarily having a microphone and scheduled five-minute speech slot. Someone pours another bottle. People move seats. The sun starts dropping.

Somewhere during dinner, I take the two of you away for 15 minutes because the sky looks ridiculous.

Then you come back.

That's what I mean when I talk about building photography into the wedding rather than making the wedding stop for photography.

8:30 PM: Now Make It Weird

Dinner is over.

Grandparents have been fed.

Everyone has had wine.

Now bring out whatever you've been hiding.

Mechanical bull.

Karaoke.

Casino tables.

Silent disco.

A band nobody knew was coming.

Drag performance.

Mechanical surfboard.

Temporary tattoo station.

Adult-sized inflatable obstacle course.

A magician doing an actual late-night show.

A ridiculous themed photo booth.

Campfire with s'mores.

Late-night trivia about the couple.

I particularly love anything that makes people forget they're at an event where they're supposed to behave themselves.

You spent your childhood playing with these people. Some of them knew you when you had braces. Your siblings probably have enough information to destroy you publicly.

Let everybody be stupid together again.

10:30 PM: Feed Them Again

Nobody has ever complained about surprise late-night food.

Pizza truck.

Tacos.

Poutine.

Mini burgers.

Hot dogs over the fire.

Ice cream truck.

Donuts.

Breakfast sandwiches at midnight.

And because you're feeding 35 people instead of 175, you can potentially do something much more interesting.

Midnight: Everybody in the Water

If you booked somewhere with a pool or private waterfront, you already know where I'm going with this.

Change out of the wedding dress if you want to keep it pristine.

Or don't.

Jump.

There is something wonderfully unceremonious about ending an incredibly beautiful wedding with 25 people in their underwear jumping off a dock.

And yes, I'm photographing it.

Sunday Morning: Nobody Leaves Without Breakfast

This is the part I think makes a wedding weekend complete.

Nobody needs to look good.

Put coffee out. Order breakfast. Have a Bloody Mary and Caesar station. Bring out fruit and pastries.

People can slowly appear whenever they wake up.

Talk about what happened the night before. Look at everyone's terrible phone photographs. Find whoever lost a shoe.

If you have the property for the afternoon, don't rush everyone out.

Swim again.

Go paddleboarding.

Sit around the pool.

Finish the leftover cake.

The wedding ends when people actually start going home.

Where Could You Actually Do This in the Okanagan?

The property matters enormously for this kind of wedding because you're not simply looking for somewhere that will allow a ceremony. You're looking for somewhere people can live for a weekend.

One of the most interesting options I found is Château Okanagan in Kelowna. It's a private 44-acre lakefront estate that specifically encourages multi-day wedding weekends. Weddings can have up to 40 event guests, 24 can stay overnight across 12 rooms, and the property has lakefront ceremony areas, gardens, terraces and on-site dining. There's also a three-night minimum, so it naturally lends itself to the Friday-to-Sunday idea rather than a single wedding day.

For something much more outdoorsy, Okanagan Glamping Co. on Westside Road is basically built around the wedding-weekend concept. Their wedding rental runs from Friday afternoon through Sunday morning across six private acres. Their own sample weekend includes dinner, cornhole and campfires Friday, coffee and the ceremony Saturday, then breakfast Sunday morning. There's group camping, glamping and Okanagan Lake views.

If you want the wedding to feel like summer camp got a very good stylist, Arosa Ranch near Osoyoos is another one I'd look at. The 160-acre property has cabins, camping and RV sites, plus a pool, saltwater hot tub, sauna, playground and trout pond. That's the kind of property where the wedding activities aren't something you have to force into the day; you already have room to play.

Eden Farm Weddings & Events in Sicamous is another option for couples willing to go roughly an hour beyond Vernon. It's a private waterfront property with riverside, forest, meadow and beach ceremony settings, plus on-site camping. Its wedding packages are structured around three-day Friday-to-Sunday use, which again makes the weekend format much easier to pull off.

For something more DIY, Oyama Community Club is interesting because it specifically offers full-weekend rentals, outdoor grounds, a field and on-site camping spots. It also allows the rehearsal dinner, reception and post-wedding brunch to happen at the same location. That gives you a blanker canvas if you'd rather spend your budget bringing in the food, bar, entertainment and design you actually want.

And if the flower-field idea is non-negotiable, N1 Estate Farm along Naramata Road is worth knowing about. Their micro-wedding setup is specifically for up to 28 attendees and the property includes cherry and apple orchards, open fields, vineyard surroundings, Okanagan Lake views and a seasonal flower farm. Their current package even includes lawn games, which tells you we're on the right track here.

What I'd Tell You as Your Photographer

Don't ask yourself, “What are we supposed to have at a wedding?”

Ask, “If we had 35 of our favourite people together for one weekend, what would we actually want to do with them?”

Start there.

Maybe it's swimming and cocktails.

Maybe it's horses and a mechanical bull.

Maybe it's an absurdly beautiful dinner followed by karaoke.

Maybe everybody goes out on the lake.

Maybe your grandmother destroys everyone at cornhole.

Whatever it is, give people permission to participate instead of spending the entire wedding watching things happen.

I'm Darrian, the photographer behind Pocket Sunshine Photography in Vernon, BC, and this is exactly the kind of wedding I'd love to help someone build. I photograph intimate weddings throughout the Okanagan and British Columbia, and I can help with location scouting, photography timelines and figuring out how to use your venue, activities and available light to create photographs throughout the entire weekend.

Because I don't just want 50 beautiful photographs of what your wedding looked like.

I want the photograph of your mom doing karaoke.

Your best friend flying off the mechanical bull.

Everybody still in pyjamas eating breakfast.

Your grandparents playing lawn games.

The boat pulling away from the dock.

Thirty people screaming because the magician just did something nobody can explain.

And you, somewhere in the middle of all of it, realizing that everyone you love is in the same place.

That's the stuff worth planning for.