How to Plan an Outdoor Wedding Reception in Another Town
Whether you’re looking to plan your wedding in a destination location or you want to meet in the middle with your long-distance spouse-to-be, you’ll want to read up on how to plan an outdoor wedding reception in another town so that you can navigate the process as smoothly as possible. While planning your wedding can be the most exciting, wonderful season of your entire life, it can also be one of the most stressful, exhausting times of your life. Everyone talks about how joyful and amazing it is to plan a wedding, but getting real about the struggles of finding a catering company, reviewing venues, and shelling out tens of thousands of dollars is harder than painting the shiny facade that everything is okay. Of course, wedding planning should be enjoyable but it isn’t all sunshine and rainbows, and that’s normal.
Do What You Want
Since it’s your wedding, you not only get to call the shots, but you also get to sit back and enjoy the benefits of it when it’s all said and done. If you picture yourself having your first dance with your new spouse under the stars in the desert, you can plan for that beautiful end to the perfect wedding day. If having a rooftop reception in a major city is more your speed, you can make an effort to make that happen, too. It’s you and your future spouse’s special day, so you should make every little detail add up to something that seems utterly magical to you!
With the suggestions below, you’ll learn how to plan an outdoor wedding reception of your dreams in the location of your choice. Although friends and family might not understand your desire to host your wedding reception somewhere that isn’t in their location, you should stick to your guns and see your vision through regardless of how they feel. This is your time to make choices that you love and not the time to be swayed by outside opinions. Although family may mean well, they sometimes would like more of a say in our choices than we’d like them to have. As you discuss your plans with your future in-laws, you and your future spouse need to be on the same page as a united team.
Announcing where you’ll have your wedding and your reception is one of the first things that you’ll do as a couple that may not align with your in-laws or family’s wishes if you haven’t rocked the boat too much with your relationship so far. No matter what you do, don’t let anyone else tell you where to have your wedding reception or how to host your wedding reception. It’s your day and the ones who truly love you will ultimately support you. They’ll just be happy to celebrate your special day wherever you decide is the most appropriate and inviting location to do it! With that out of the way, let’s get into more of our tips for how to plan an outdoor wedding reception in the location of your choosing.
Safety and Comfort Should Be a Priority
When you consider how to plan an outdoor wedding reception and research planning an indoor wedding reception, think about how safe and comfortable the guests will be in the weather conditions that are likely for that time of year. After all, frostbite, hypothermia, and related conditions are no joke. On top of the medical risks of an outdoor reception in temperatures that range in the single digits and below zero, your guests may not want to stay out in the cold temperatures too long before they get antsy and decide to leave. When it’s fall or spring, though, having wood stoves in a warming station for guests or even a fire pit if you can set one up could encourage your guests to stay longer since they’ll be nice and cozy.
While you’re at it, you should consider what type of rooftop design you like. For summer months, a gazebo or pergola with a lattice roof may be your speed. In the spring and fall, something more enclosed and protective against blustery conditions may be ideal. On top of thinking about rooftop choices, you’ll want to think about the type of flooring you’d like if you have your wedding at a venue that has synthetic grass installation as the “flooring” with landscape lighting or you could hire a hardwood flooring service to install solid wooden flooring on an elevated platform under the rooftop of your choice. Alternatively, if your dream is to find a porch with a suspended concrete slab floor, you can knock yourself out and choose one with that type of flooring.
If you don’t like the color of the venue or it doesn’t fit the color scheme you’ve chosen for your wedding, you may be able to hire painters to remedy that for you. Before you start laying down paint, you should ask the venue owners if it’s okay for you to paint it. If they’re hesitant, you could offer to paint it on your dime and restore the venue to the original color after the wedding.
Manage Your Expectations
Keep in mind that as you think about how to plan an outdoor wedding reception, there will be times when venues, caterers, and other staff say no. While this can be hard to deal with if you wanted to paint your venue to look a certain way or you were set on your wedding playing out in a specific manner, it’s important to stay flexible. Before you even hear them say “no,” you can practice gratitude for all of the places, people, and things that have said “yes” to you as you’ve navigated how to plan an outdoor wedding reception so far.
Managing your feelings around what you may perceive as rejection or someone ruining your perfect plans can be hard when it’s something as high stakes as planning your wedding reception. Still, you don’t want to fit the stereotype of a “bridezilla” or “groomzilla,” so you should handle rejection and be turned down on your desires with grace and kindness instead of throwing a fit. Usually, responding with anger to service industry workers or managers won’t get you what you want. Even if it does produce the desired outcome, it probably won’t be worth it to embarrass yourself with childish behavior.
Focus on the Food
High-quality food can cost a pretty penny for wedding planners, but it is worth it if you can swing it in your budget. For many folks who plan a destination wedding, tucking into delightful local cuisine is part of the fun of planning a wedding somewhere new and exciting. While you might think that wedding food has to be bland chicken breast and soggy vegetables based on past experiences, the food at a wedding can be amazing. As Kimberly Ashlee shares with brides.com, “”I hope that we’ve been a part of changing people’s minds that wedding food can be just as good as when you go to a fine dining restaurant,’ she says. ‘But, in order to set those expectations—to get that level of sophistication—it requires more labor, and that translates to higher cost per person.'”
Consider the Clean-Up Crew
While it’s not the most glamorous side of how to plan an outdoor wedding reception, finding an appropriately sized dumpster rental and hiring cleaning staff if necessary could be a crucial part of how to plan an outdoor wedding reception. After all, without a clean-up crew in place, you’ll end up doing the cleaning yourself. If you leave bags of trash, debris, or decorations for the venue to clean up after you leave, you could end up paying cleaning fees and other fines. Depending on the terms of renting the venue, you could also get in legal trouble or at least leave a bad impression if you don’t pick up your trash after the wedding. While all you might want to do after you’re done partying the night away at your wedding reception is head to the hotel and get ready for bed, cleaning up after yourself and your guests is a necessary part of the wedding reception. If you don’t want to clean yourself, you can hire staff to clean the event. There are plenty of options for large and small cleaning services who are used to cleaning up after events so you don’t have to do it.
If you plan on doing the cleaning yourself and renting a dumpster, you’ll want to think about what might be the most appropriate size for your needs. The smallest dumpster is known as a 10-yard dumpster. A 10-Yard Dumpster measures at approximately 14′ x 7.5′ x 3.5′. If you anticipate that you’ll have four loads of trash that could fit in four trucks, this size might be alright. If you’re measuring the size of a dumpster in trash bags, this dumpster can hold between 50-60 trash bags. While that might sound like a lot, a large wedding reception could easily reach that much trash or more. If you don’t think that will be enough, you can go to the next-sized dumpster. A 15-yard dumpster is a little bit larger. It measures roughly 16′ x 7.5′ x 4.5′ and can handle up to 90 trash backs if they are the standard size. For truck loads, it can handle about six loads from a pickup truck. It still might not be big enough for your needs, though, so don’t choose it just because of the price if you need the next size up.
The next largest dumpster is the 20-yard dumpster. It measures about 22′ x 7.5′ x 4.5′. This hefty dumpster can hold 120 standard garbage bags once they are full. This equals about 12 loads for the average pickup truck. There are larger sizes of dumpsters available if you do some digging as you navigate how to plan an outdoor wedding reception. Quite frankly, though, your wedding reception shouldn’t need a larger dumpster than that unless it’s a massive wedding reception with a high volume of waste. In that case, hiring staff to clean and take care of the trash is a must. You can also ask your venue to let you know what type of dumpsters or cleaning services they offer and how much those services cost to utilize as a wedding reception host.
Investigate the Condition of the Venue
If your wedding takes place in a town that’s affected by flooding, you’ll want to quiz the venue’s staff on whether the venue practices water mitigation and drainage solutions to keep the place safe from water damage. As servicemasterrestore.com shares, “Water damage mitigation prevents further water damage from affecting your property and belongings. The water mitigation process involves using specialized equipment and techniques to minimize the amount of loss, such as: Removing damaged furniture and materials, including drywall and flooring.” If your venue doesn’t practice water mitigation, it can make you wonder whether they take good care of the place. The last thing you want is for flooring to crumble under your feet for your first dance because of water damage or have water pooling in different sections of the venue which could create a whole host of health or safety hazards for your wedding guests.
For the record, it’s okay to feel whatever way that you feel about wedding planning. What’s more, your feelings and thoughts about the wedding planning process are subject to change from one day to the next and even one moment to the next moment. Some days, you might be over the moon that you get to plot your fairytale end that leads to a happily ever after as you schedule cake tastings and try on wedding gowns for the first time. Other days, the pressure of it all may get to you.
No matter how you feel, there are some tried and true tips we have offered for how to plan an outdoor wedding reception so that you have the outdoor wedding reception of your dreams. Although some people might opt to have an outdoor wedding reception in their backyard, you can host an outdoor wedding reception near, far, or wherever you and your sweetheart decide to host it!