How Something Beautiful Was Borne Out of The Ugliness of a Global Pandemic

According to a study by LendingTree, 63% of couples had to postpone their weddings in 2020 due to COVID, and more than half of those couples lost out on money – to the tune of an average of $3,300+. A new trend was taking shape as a result… the Mini-mony. Accustomed to planning weddings at some of Atlanta’s most lavish venues to accommodate guest lists in the hundreds, Lisa and her SomeTheme team suddenly received requests for weddings involving a much smaller number of guests. Suddenly, some of her go-to venues no longer made sense for these more diminutive audiences, or they were already booked well in advance and couldn’t accommodate tighter planning windows. The challenge was that her couples still wanted a lavish event, just in a smaller setting. That’s when a dream Lisa didn’t even know she had began to take shape.

“Many couples we met with post-COVID had heard the horror stories of people losing their venues, vendors, and money as a result of having to reschedule or cancel their weddings,” said Lisa. “For those who did attend a wedding in 2020, they saw the appeal of having a luxury event with fewer guests because they had attended events with distancing restrictions where the venue had mandated that guest lists be cut drastically. They loved the experience shared at those events. What they didn’t realize was that those events took several months or longer to plan. We tried to help these clients, knowing it would be difficult to find appropriately sized venues, vendors, and rentals available on such short notice – particularly in the face of supply chain issues. Finding the quality we were looking for proved to be difficult, so we were inspired by this new mindset coming from potential clients to come up with a new venue concept that could cater to clients who don’t always want the long planning periods and big guest lists.”