SHANISA SABDARALI AND KYLE KLIMCHOCK. | PHOTO BY DANIJELA DJUKIC-OSTROWSKI

If you’ve ever been to — or been part of — a big wedding, then the following scenario is going to sound familiar.

The banquet hall is filled with elderly aunts and uncles, distant cousins, friends from high school and, of course, the de rigueur mix of childhood, college and work buddies.

The bride and groom spend their evening dutifully making their way from table to table, kissing cheeks and thanking their guests for sharing in their big day.

So busy are they in making sure to greet everyone that the newly wedded couple doesn’t get to relax, grab a plate and chow down on some goodies from their elaborate Pittsburgh cookie table.

Oh, wait — that was me.

I’ve only ever seen photographs of my cookie table, which, thanks to my plethora of elderly Italian-American relatives, was overflowing with pizzelles, iced lemon knot cookies and — my husband’s favorite  — delicate lady fingers.

From what I’ve heard, the cookies (even our experienced photographers were exclaiming over them) tasted even better than they looked.

I wouldn’t know.

Cookie-table disappointment aside, I don’t regret anything about my big day. For those who crave a more intimate experience, though, there are a variety of options out there these days — and they’re becoming increasingly common, as well as more accessible.

The Pop-Up Wedding

The owner of Pittsburgh-based Unity by Kristine and The Pop-Up Pittsburgh Wedding Co., Kristine Felicetti acts as officiant, wedding planner and vendor coordinator for her clients.

A health-insurance worker by day, Felicetti fell in love with the idea of love five years ago and obtained a certificate to become an officiant. In addition to traditional wedding ceremonies, Felicetti also offers elopements and vow-renewal ceremonies.

“I didn’t even know officiants existed until about 2019,” she says. “And when I first heard what they did, I thought, ‘I would love to do that.’”

Felicetti also began specializing in pop-up weddings — scaled-down and affordable alternatives to traditional wedding celebrations.

In this scenario, three separate weddings (each approximately two hours long) take place throughout the day at one venue. Each couple uses the same decor; some wedding-day traditions, such as cutting the cake and having a first dance, still take place.

The goal is for these couples to have a stress-free and magical day, according to Felicetti. As she herself points out on her business website, a wedding does not have to be expensive to be beautiful.

“I just absolutely love having this alternative available to Pittsburgh couples, where it is very cost-effective; they do not have to plan anything — everything is vetted,” Felicetti says. “The pop-up weddings are really for the couples that are completely hands-off.”

The timing of her new pop-up wedding business proved to be fortuitous. With the advent of the pandemic, more brides and grooms were choosing simple pop-up weddings, where they could have an intimate, all-inclusive ceremony with up to 40 guests.

“I was officiating pop-up weddings owned by other vendors and fell in love with this concept,” Felicetti says.

In 2022, she became the owner of The Pop-Up Pittsburgh Wedding Co., although she says the popularity of pop-up weddings has slowed.

“Soon after the pandemic, though, it fell off the radar because everyone was excited that they were back to being able to have full-sized weddings again,” Felicetti says with a laugh.

A Wedding? In This Economy?

More recently, Felicetti has begun coordinating micro-weddings, which offers her clients the same intimate feel as a pop-up wedding but with more customized options, such as decor and dessert choices. Typically, these types of weddings cost between $5,000 to $6,500.

“I see it as being very cyclical,” Felicetti says of the demand for smaller, more cost-effective celebrations. “I think that we’ll have popular years, and then we may not. But with the economy right now, and with what other vendors have been saying, I’m seeing a lot of vendors really liking being involved in the smaller wedding spaces.”

That’s not to say Felicetti has given up on the pop-up wedding side of her business. In October, she’s planning a pop-up event that will take place at Blue Ribbon Farms in Aliquippa. The price tag for such a celebration? An economical $3,575 per couple.

To put that price in perspective, the average cost of a wedding in 2025 is $33,000, according to a study undertaken by The Knot.

Love Overseas

Shanisa Sabdarali and Kyle Klimchock were one of the couples who decided on a pop-up wedding overseen by Felicetti. When they became engaged, Sabdarali, who hails from Trinidad and Tobago, and Klimchock, who grew up in Westmoreland County, were both working as English teachers in Japan.

“We met through some mutual friends on Halloween night; we went to the same party,” Sabdarali says, adding that Klimchock was dressed as Superman. “We had an immediate connection and started dating right after.”

After they got engaged, Klimchock decided to come back to the United States one year before his fiancee to find a new job and put down roots while Sabdarali applied for a K-1 visa, more commonly known as a fiancé visa.

SHANISA SABDARALI AND KYLE KLIMCHOCK WERE MARRIED MAY 18, 2024. | PHOTO BY DANIJELA DJUKIC-OSTROWSKI

With so much going on, the couple left the wedding planning completely in Felicetti’s hands.

“I think planning a wedding is, of course, stressful on its own, but planning a wedding from different time zones is even more stressful,” Sabdarali says. “We knew we wanted something intimate and small, and Kristine and her team definitely had everything down — the venue, the cake, the decorations.”

After connecting over many Zoom calls, in which Felicetti got to know the couple, Sabdarali arrived in the U.S. three days before her wedding took place on May 18, 2024.

She was not disappointed by what she found.

Despite their wedding being one of several celebrations that day at Station House 7 in Delmont (one of Felicetti’s steady locations for pop-up weddings), Sabdarali and Klimchock were able to personalize their big day by placing photos of themselves during their various travels, plus boxes of traditional sweets from Sabdarali’s home country, on each table. They also livestreamed the ceremony for family and friends who were unable to attend the ceremony.

“[Felicetti] really got to know us as a couple, and it just didn’t feel like a generic wedding,” Klimchock says. “It felt really personal, so I think all of that definitely made us feel like this was the right decision and the right way we wanted to get married.”

The Small Yet Luxurious Wedding

Just because a wedding is small doesn’t mean it can’t be luxurious — especially if you have Alexis Allen involved. The owner of Pittsburgh-based Alexis Allen Consulting, Allen is known for planning lavish, impeccably curated weddings, social soirees and charitable gatherings.

For these small yet sumptuous weddings, Allen says the demographics tend to skew towards brides and grooms in their 30s or 40s, or what she likes to call “seasoned” couples embarking on a second marriage.

In these cases, Allen says there’s less pressure on the couple to execute a wedding that will please their elders (who typically contribute financially to their children’s first weddings), freeing them up to plan the big day of their dreams. She recalls how one couple, who were blending families, incorporated their children into their intimate ceremony, which was attended only by their inner circle. They followed it up with a fun reception at the former SLATE studio in the Strip District that was accompanied by a soundtrack blasting ’90s R&B and hip-hop.

“They didn’t have to worry about having to appease the masses,” Allen says. “It was all stuff they loved.”

With a smaller guest list, couples also can invest more in the details, such as customized menus, placement settings and flowers.

“You can put more energy and more investment in making something more intentional and special,” Allen adds.

For one couple planning a second marriage attended by 70 guests, Allen used her ingenuity to turn the Duquesne Club into a glamorous cabaret that the Rat Pack would have been at home in.

“We had a band that came in, and we set up the room very uniquely,” she says. “We had more real estate to play with because there were less people, so we were able to accomplish that intimate setting, but it was still extremely luxurious.”

While she still loves a big bash, Allen predicts more intimate weddings will continue to take place in the future.

“I hope it’s a trend that continues to catch on and gets bigger,” she says. “If someone thinks it’s lacking energy or whatever, it’s actually the complete opposite. It’s really high-energy because you can focus your time and resources in a smaller way.”