Weddingbee Blog

This is something that’s been in the back of my mind for a while. In Japanese, we’d call it mendokusai—annoying, a pain in the ass. My parents’ backyard has no lighting scheme to speak of at the moment, so we’ll have to start from scratch. I’ve been researching our options in terms of how to light up our wedding.

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First up is these bad boys. Big quartz lights on poles. They’d probably do the best job for a well-lit backyard at night, but I don’t want florescent, harsh lighting. I’m looking for a soft glow, and I think these will provide too much light. Plus, a local rental company priced them at $40 a pop! No thanks. Next!

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Tiki torches. Fire would definitely give the wedding that charming glow we’re looking for. Coupled with paper lanterns and white string lights, I think these would adequately light up the backyard to safety standards. But the thought of an open flame makes me wary, and tiki torches don’t really flow with the aesthetics of our wedding. Still, the price is right at $40 for two poles (via Home Depot). I’ll have to think about them.

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I almost screamed when I found these solar-powered white string lights. As I’ve mentioned, my parents’ house doesn’t have a back door (which always freaked me out growing up—ONE fire exit?…I thought about weird things as a child), so we can’t easily run power cords into the house. We could put up wooden poles and run them overhead across our backyard a la this backyard wedding from Once Wed:

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The solar-powered lights store up energy in their panels during the day and come on after dark. We’d conserve energy and money, as these run a mere $23. Awesome, right?

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What Asian-inspired wedding wouldn’t be complete without paper lanterns? We’ll have them in our wedding colors of red, white, and pink (and black, but black lanterns=morbid?). One tiiiiiiny problem—my backyard doesn’t actually have any trees to hang them from. But we’ve got shrubs. Lots and lots of shrubs. So we’ll buy LED paper lanterns and stick ’em in and around the shrubs. This wedding is getting lit one way or another, and who knows, it might make them look pretty!

Last up, candles. Everywhere.

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How are you going to light up your wedding day?