Weddingbee Blog

When we first decided to host our own outdoor “garden wedding”, I was annoyed at the lack of boots-on-the-ground information about them. I wanted a list of things to know and do so that I’d be prepared, but I couldn’t find one. Consider this my first attempt to remedy that situation; I will update this again afterward as well.

In addition to the “normal” wedding items, don’t forget:

• You’ll need to have a pet plan! We have two dogs, both of whom are very sweet but incredibly friendly. Ya know, they’ll knock you over to give you smoochies. We’ve decided to send them away for the entire wedding weekend and our honeymoon week. Don’t worry, they’re going to a fabulous doggy daycare facility that also boards. They’ll get to play with their peeps all day and sleep in the enclosed playroom overnight; they might not want to come home! As the mister said, we’ll all be on vacation, just not together. As far as the cats go, we’re going to set up a cat room with food, toys, and litter boxes and try to keep them there. Their stress levels will stay low and we won’t have to worry about cat hair everywhere. {Though I suspect Frank the cat will make at least one appearance.}

• Figure out how you’ll deal with bugs and other unwelcome critters. We’re using a fogger ahead of time, plus citronella torches and bug repellent lanterns on the day of. We’ll have a “welcome station” at the entrance to the ceremony trail with a whole bucket load of mosquito repellent sprays and wipes in different scents. I briefly considered dividing up a big jug of the stuff into individual spray bottles, but a) who am I kidding? and b) I’m not sure giving someone bug spray counts as a favor. Plus, this way you get to make your own DEET decision.
• Ugg, yard work. We’ve primped and prepped our yard to death (not really, but you know what I mean). We’ve fertilized and raked and seeded and mowed and trimmed and mulched. We’re about to go on one last Round-Up extravaganza to get rid of poison ivy and encroaching greenery, and we’re throwing a bunch of annuals in the ground the weekend before our wedding to spruce things up.
• Check with your city and county. In our case, because we’re putting a tent IN the street, we had to secure agreement from all of our neighbors (who are fabulous) and then file a traffic control permit to notify fire and emergency personnel of the detour. We’re also renting barricades and detour signs for the weekend, and we’ll be dropping by our local firehouse with a yummy sweet treat of some sort and a detailed map of the road blockage. On the bright side, if people are parked everywhere, we’re already covered by the paperwork we’ve done. If you’re not going all crazy like we are, check in with your local firehouse and police station anyway so they’re not surprised by the sudden increase in traffic.
• Decide what you’ll outsource. When people are descending upon your home, you can’t trash the place… and we’re slobs. We’ll have someone come in to clean right before our wedding weekend, and we’ll do our best to pick up after ourselves. We’ll also hire neighborhood teenagers to deal with trash and other setup issues on our wedding day. {Isn’t that what teenagers are for?}
• Have a trash plan. Seriously. We’re lucky in that our neighbors across the street will be out of town for a month and have graciously allowed us the use of their trash cans and driveway. We’ll put our four cans and their two in their driveway to keep it all out of our hair until trash day.
• Build a bonus day in between your wedding and honeymoon. Rather than ask our friends to deal with returning the rentals and general clean-up the day after our wedding — in our home — we’re not leaving for our honeymoon until two days after our wedding. We’ll be able to pack, feed the cats and sleep late.
• Decide what the limit to your hosting willingness will be. Strange sentence, but what I’m trying to say is you must remember that hosting your own reception is hosting, so offering to host your whole family as well might be pushing it. Luckily, my family is brilliant and kindly extricated themselves from my offer to have them stay with us. While we have the room, I think we all lack the level of sanity that would require. My family will be staying in hotels, giving us all a much needed break from each other. We will, however, host our rehearsal dinner — pizza and beer on the back deck.
• Take advantage of delivery options. While the plan isn’t locked down, we’re probably going to order pizzas from our yummy local pizzeria. They’ll deliver to us while we’re rehearsing, and since we’ll have rented chairs in abundance, we’ll set up some tables along the back deck. We might also order pizza for a quick bite on the day of our wedding, but we’re trying to find other options so we’re not all sick of pizza.

Bonus reminder for everyone: start wearing bug repellent all the time at least a week before your wedding. Mosquito bites aren’t particularly photogenic, if you know what I mean.

That’s all I can think of for now, but I’ll do a big pros/ cons/ things to remember post after the big day. Can you think of anything I’ve forgotten?