Hosting a wedding and reception in your backyard can be a great option. Backyard weddings give you limitless options for injecting your personal style and, if you pan it well, can be a bargain. Read on for the top 10 tips on making your backyard wedding a success.
Plan it
While backyard weddings can be a great way to save on ceremony and reception venue space, you need to consider many details as you plan in order to keep your budget at bay. First, consider your space. Is it large enough to hold all of your guests? A dance floor? Table seating and a bar? To get these answers, first write up a preliminary guest list to get an idea of your venue size. Certain types of events will require less space, while others, more. A passed cocktail reception will save you table space. On the other hand, if you are planning on having the ceremony and a sit down dinner you will need a much larger are to accommodate everything you will need to bring in. Tip: Speak to a catering or rental company, they can help you answer a lot of these preliminary questions. They have experience with how much space you will need for different types and sizes of events.
Prep Your Space
If you have at least 8 weeks before your event, you should have enough time to prep the backyard. Backyard Summer weddings come with the added benefit of natural decoration-flowers are usually already in place for you. While nature can take care of most of the cost for you, do your planting the year before with the layout of your event in mind. Tip: In order to plant with your event in mind, speak with your wedding planner, Rental Company, or caterer about the layout before you begin any work. They can help you think about layout ideas and maximize your space.
Create a Theme
Your theme, no matter what you choose, will be the driving factor behind many of your décor and design decisions. Every theme lends itself to different flowers, photo frames, centerpieces, chairs, linens, and food and catering choices. Tip: Speak with your planner and catering company abot your theme early on. They can help you with ideas and also assist you as you hone in on those theme-specific choices for your event.
Tent it
This may be one of the most cited recommendations from planners and caterers across the board- rent a tent! Not only will it literally save your day in case of a little bad weather, but it also provides needed shelter from things like too much sun or a bit of a heavy breeze. Tents also give you a lot more decorating options. Tip: Speak to your caterer about renting a tent. They may include this cost or have specific tent rental company that they work with. Find this out before hand so your budget is on target and you don’t rent something from another company extra that is already included.
Dance Floor
Renting a dance floor is essential to hosting a backyard wedding. Without a dance floor you will have a ton of holes in our lawn and a lot of unhappy women with ruined heels. A dance floor also looks great. Tip: Many planners cite this as their second most important rental for a backyard wedding-it tops the list with renting a tent.
Sparkle and Shine
A beautiful perk of having a backyard wedding is that you can light up your space with as many or as little lights as you like. Also, because it’s your own backyard, you can start stringing lights early, which will shave a lot of prep time as you get closer to the wedding day. Tip: Planners suggest stringing lights on the ceiling of the tent and wrapping them around trees. Also, think about hanging chines lanterns and placing more lanterns or candles on tables for extra ambiance.
Seating and extra rentals
Experts agree that renting your chairs and tables from a catering or rental company is your best bet. When you rent this equipment you don’t have to worry about set-up or breakdown. You can just show up and the reception seating is created for you. Tip: You will not be sorry you rented your tables and chairs. Also consider temperature. Will it be very warm? Maybe a bit brisk as the night goes on? Consider renting equipment that can cool or heat your tent space.
Hopefully these tips will have you on your way to throwing the amazing backyard wedding of your dreams. Here’s a list of our biggest tips to help you as you plan!
- Talk to your caterer and/ or rental company to discuss the size of your event and ask them to visit your site before you start planning details to ensure your space will accommodate your day.
- Talk to vendors before you start to plan décor
- Rent a tent, dance floor, and tables and chairs!
- Rent cooing or heating equipment
- You will not regret money spent on a great caterer and a rental company to take care of details on the day of your wedding.