Will celebrity ‘minimonies’ and micro wedding celebrations spark a new marriage trend?

When we imagine a celebrity wedding, a blow-up ceremony beyond our wildest dreams instantly springs to mind. Complete with costume changes, hundreds of guests and lavish decor, its unrelatability makes it all the more enticing.

Royal weddings are a prime example of sparing no expense. When Prince William and Kate Middleton tied the knot at Westminster Abbey, it was said that the ceremony ended up costing nothing short of £30 million. In 2018, Nick Jonas and Priyanka Chopra’s nuptials — which comprised traditional Hindu and Christian ceremonies — was a three-day event that is rumoured to have cost about $800,000.

When Kim Kardashian and Kanye West married in 2014 on location in Florence, Italy, the wedding was estimated to cost $2.8 million. In fairness, operatic legend Andrea Bocelli did perform, but this figure does not factor in the costs of private jets, accommodation and the French leg of the event, where Lana Del Rey performed Summertime Sadness.

In stark contrast to her younger sister Kim, Kourtney Kardashian opted for a much more low-key approach to her wedding festivities. After leaving Santa Barbara Courthouse, Kourtney and Blink-182 drummer Travis Barker were spotted riding off into the sunset in a vintage convertible with a ‘just married’ sign hanging off the back. Getting engaged back in October 2021, Kourtney and Travis enjoyed a practice run in Las Vegas just over a month ago, unofficially saying ‘I do’ at the One Love Wedding Chapel in Sin City.

While it may not be exactly on brand for a member of the Kardashian clan to take an understated approach, Kravis might just be popularising a new trend within the wedding world that grew in popularity over the course of the pandemic: minimonies.

Essentially the same idea as a micro-wedding, a minimony strips away all the fuss of a traditional blow-out wedding, allowing for a more intimate union. Instead of focusing on the surrounding stresses of a marital event, these smaller ceremonies simply revolve around the commitment between the pair tying the knot and the love that they share.

Limiting the palaver by culling the amount of guests in attendance, a minimony marries (pardon the pun) the spontaneity of eloping and the excitement of the long-awaited big day. While exchanging vows in quiet is more than enough for some, others set about planning a ‘sequel wedding’ a little down the line, where friends and family can celebrate the marriage together.

Kravis did exactly that a few weeks later with their Dolce & Gabbana-sponsored wedding at a castle in Portofino, Italy. Let’s just say, this was a far less understated affair.

As with most trends, minimonies or under the radar weddings are celebrity led. Throughout recent years, a number of celeb couples have kept the details of their private life under wraps, revealing their marital status with an Instagram post, or dropping it into conversation during media interviews.

Shying away from prying eyes back in 2020, Lily Allen and David Harbour enjoyed a Las Vegas wedding, officiated by an Elvis impersonator, followed by a feed from In-N-Out. Similarly, Tove Lo got married in secret during quarantine just last year, taking to Instagram to let fans know that though they wish they could have had everyone they love with them, their “whirlwind” wedding was “incredibly special.”

When Ariana Grande and Dalton Gomez shared snaps from their intimate ceremony at Grand’s California home, she essentially broke the internet, and Joe Jonas and Sophie Turner made followers extremely envious when they uploaded images from their Vegas celebration.

While the trend may not be a new one — Marilyn Monroe essentially started the trend with a last minute City Hall wedding to baseball player Joe DiMaggio back in 1954 — we’re pretty confident that Kravis’ recent nuptials will prompt a return to more intimate weddings across the board. At the end of the day, a marriage is all about the love shared between two people, so why get bogged down in the fanfare?