Outdoor weddings will never go out of style. Fresh greenery, rolling hills, elaborate gardens, and picturesque sunsets all make for the perfect backdrop for your bridal photo shoot. If you’re planning an outdoor wedding, ensure your guests are as excited about it as you are by remembering these five essentials.
#1: Shelter
Assuming the weather holds out and you two get married on a cloudless day, you still have to provide your guests with shelter…sun shelter that is. Many bridal parties underestimate the power of the sun. Combine that with the spiked punch you’re serving your guests, and you’re going to have to deal with a whole gaggle of dehydrated and drunken guests. For everyone’s comfort and safety, ensure your guests have somewhere shady to go if the sun gets to be too much.
#2: Contingency Plan
If it rains, what do you do? Come up with a solid plan B because you never know what Mother Nature will decide to do that day. Don’t leave it up to fate, or worse, decide to wing it. Give it as much thought as plan A. Maybe you’ll have to move the ceremony inside the lodge/house/barn. Maybe you’ll have to rent a tent. Or maybe, you’d be satisfied with buying 100 white umbrellas for your guests. Whatever you decide to do, make sure your plan is a solid one.
#3: Venue-Appropriate Food
Think of your venue and imagine what food will match it perfectly. If your outdoor wedding takes place at your uncle’s farm, is a formal French dinner really appropriate? That’s not to say that you have to resort to hamburgers and hotdogs. However, matching the setting with a more suitable meal style makes the eating part just as enjoyable and ties in the theme of your wedding.
#4: Shoe-Friendly Dance Floor
Be nice to your high-heeled friends. They probably spent a pretty penny on their shoes and outfit. To ask them to risk breaking a heel or twisting their ankle by giving them nothing but soggy sod to dance on isn’t very considerate. There are several ways you can make your dance floor more comfortable for your guests. You can build or rent a wooden platform (usually tent-rental companies provide this service), offer your guests flip flops to dance in, find a dry patch of turf, or bring the dancing indoors.
#5: Bathrooms That Don’t Make You Go “Eeek!”
If your wedding is in the middle of a private field, there probably aren’t too many facilities close by. While giving your guests a real bathroom to go to is ideal, sometimes port-a-potties are your only option. If that is the only way to go, do your guests a huge favour by selecting top-of-the-line port-a-potties and a real portable sink. You earn extra points if you leave your guests with a basket of goodies to help them freshen up, like mints, deodorant spray, hair clips, bandages, etc.
And don’t forget to hire a photographer to document it all! Contact Cindy June Photography for your upcoming outdoor wedding!
