When you’re interested in learning how to do a backyard wedding, it can help to see what other people find important to add to their to-do list for a wedding at home. Churches, courthouses, and venues may be popular places to host weddings but they aren’t the only spaces where you can get married. If you’ve always dreamed of reciting your wedding vows under a large oak tree in your family’s summer property or you want a cozy get-together instead of a big event, you should think about what it would be like to host your wedding at your home or a property that your parents own if that feels right for you. Since many folks are looking to cut costs where they can in wedding planning, slashing your wedding bill by removing the expenses related to renting and cleaning a venue can translate to thousands of dollars back in your pocket after the wedding.
Even if you’ve never thought about how to do a backyard wedding, there are many resources available to ensure that your wedding at home is as beautiful and memorable as it would be if you planned to host it at an extravagant venue. When you don’t have to pay for a venue, you may also have more money to invest in more expensive catering services, cleaning crews, DJ services, and more. When you host a wedding at a new house, it can act as a housewarming party that encourages guests to help you make your house a proper home for you and your new spouse so it can be a great way to blend two events into one if you’re not a fan of throwing parties more often than you have to do it.
Update Your Home’s HVAC System
Winter weddings and summer weddings will both require proper climate control to ensure that your guests are comfortable when they’re in your home or other sheltered spaces on your property. Even if the temperatures don’t seem like they’ll dip into extremes on the day of your wedding, it can still be a good idea to have professionals who work in HVAC services inspect your HVAC system and follow their recommendations well before it’s time for you to walk down the aisle. If you have issues with your furnace or central air conditioning on your wedding day, it can mean rescheduling your wedding if you’re having the event at home. Although you might be interested in learning how to do a backyard wedding because you plan to host your wedding in your backyard, it’s still prudent to ensure that every aspect of your house is functioning at an optimal level even if guests will probably not find their way into your home.
Beyond what happens on the wedding day, you won’t want to face a large HVAC bill a few days before your wedding because you didn’t maintain it on a timely schedule before it was time for your wedding. Starting your newly married life with large expenses and stressful home repairs can feel like a burden that could dampen early marital bliss. One of the best ways to avoid unexpected repairs in an HVAC system is to get regular inspections done well before you have large events that involve many guests and moving parts such as a wedding at home.
Make a Place for Guests to Do Their “Business” Your Business
While having a wedding at home can make you feel like you already have everything you need from a space for guests to spend time at the reception to a toilet, you’ll need to think about how guests could put a strain on your home’s facilities. Unless you’re having a wedding that only involves a few people as guests, you should look into a local portable restroom rental company before the big day so you don’t have to strain your pipes or navigate long lines outside of your bathroom on your wedding day. Since portable toilet rental companies usually maintain their facilities themselves, this also means that you won’t have to clean a toilet at the end of the night.
As you consider how to do a backyard wedding, meeting your guests’ basic needs like having a place to relieve themselves privately and having access to food and water should be a main priority. It might not be as glamorous as choosing your wedding color scheme or picking out a dress as the bride, but it is an important aspect of wedding planning that you don’t want to leave until the last minute. Depending on when your wedding is taking place, these companies may have a higher or lower demand so you should call portable restroom companies well in advance of the wedding to avoid a delay in getting the portable toilets when you need them.
If you’re worried that portable toilets might be an ugly addition to your wedding decor, you can get luxury portable restroom rentals from a company that cares as much about aesthetics as they do about the quality of their products. Regular blue portable toilets might make you think of construction sites or county fairs, but when you use luxury portable restroom rentals, you’ll hardly notice the connection between these facilities and the ones that are used at larger events. You can also place the restrooms at a distance from your wedding reception area and where the ceremony is taking place to avoid unpleasant smells from polluting your special day.
Focus on the Food
For many couples who are about to get married, one of their biggest priorities in wedding planning is finding an event catering service that not only serves the food they like but also fits within their budget. If you’re trying to cut costs at your wedding, food might not be an area where you will want to go for the lowest option possible. Although some catering services may be significantly cheaper than others, you’ll want to make sure that the food you serve at your wedding is tasty and that the company follows all of the local, state, and federal regulations around food safety.
When you’re looking into how to do a backyard wedding, you may find information that suggests that catering the food to your wedding yourself is a good option for saving money and bonding with your bridal party. Some couples might be fine with serving a potluck-style dinner at their wedding while others may balk at the idea of serving anything less than catered dinners from a reputable company. No matter what food option you decide is right for you, you should have enough of an understanding of food safety to keep foods at a safe temperature and discard food that is not safe to consume to avoid giving your guests foodborne illnesses.
Spruce Up Your Place Before and After the Event
For many people, it’s stressful enough to invite your in-laws over on a regular day to your house let alone inviting 100 of your closest friends and family members to your home. If you’re worried about making your home presentable before, during, or after your wedding, you can enlist a crew of professionals from a residential cleaning services company to take care of it for you. While this might be more expensive than cleaning your home and property yourself, it can be worth every penny if it means that you get to relax on your wedding day and enjoy your wedding night instead of packing trash into trash bags and spraying down surfaces with bleach.
As you navigate all of the aspects of how to do a backyard wedding, you’ll want to make a budget that dictates how much you’re willing to spend on each part of the wedding planning process. If hiring professional cleaners is too expensive for you, you might be able to get a better deal by hiring someone less experienced or well-known for their cleaning services in your area than larger companies. You may also be able to pay family members or friends to clean up after the reception for less than professional cleaners or even ask loved ones to donate a gift card to local cleaning services as a gift for your wedding that keeps on giving.
Illuminate Your Special Day
There are many reasons why it’s important to have good lighting on your wedding day and hire a landscape lighting company to ensure that your lighting is as beautiful as possible on the big day. While it might seem unnecessary to have great lighting if you already have lights in place around your yard or you know that your wedding will take place during the daytime, it’s wise to ensure that your lighting is perfect for professional photos of your wedding and maintaining safety if your wedding reception stretches late into the night. If you have specific colors for your wedding, you can choose lights that complement your current color scheme or contrast with it for a special glow in pictures.
When you’re looking into lighting tips for how to do a backyard wedding, you may want to think about whether you want to use lights that you’ll take down after the wedding or have lighting options that you’ll still love well after your special day. If it’s been a while since you replaced the bulbs or checked the wiring in your outdoor lights, you can have technicians evaluate them or look into them yourself if it’s safe to do so. You can also rent specific items that can enhance lighting choices like a disco ball if you want to turn the party up a notch once the reception starts.
Design Your Landscape
As you think about how to do a backyard wedding, the yard is everything. You can hire landscape designers to help you make your yard look great for the wedding. As you’re designing your landscape, you should think about what practical choices may help make your wedding space more convenient.
Treat Windows Properly
Having proper blinds and other window coverings matters whether you’re having a wedding at home or not. For this reason, you should consult with window treatment services before your wedding day. If your blinds are cracked or broken, you can make it easier to plan how to do a backyard wedding by taking away the stress and getting them replaced.
Clean the Home’s Exterior
The outside of the home matters as much as the interior so you should schedule pressure washing services before your wedding day. As you decide how to do a backyard wedding, you can plan this to happen close to the wedding day. If you pressure wash your home’s exterior too far in advance, you might need to do it again closer to the date.
Elevate the Reception with a Dance Floor
To ensure that your guests have the most fun, you should consider paying for a dance floor rental. This makes it so that you don’t have to renovate your whole outdoor entertaining space when thinking about how to do a backyard wedding. With a rental, you can return it after the wedding and spend less than you would if you bought one.
Prevent Carpet Stains
From champagne to flower petals, there are lots of things at your wedding that could stain your carpet. To avoid staining, you should hire local carpet cleaners after the wedding. While it’s not the first thing you might consider for how to do a backyard wedding, it’s part of cleaning up after the event.
Before you assume that you know how to do a backyard wedding, it’s smart to consult with those who have walked in your shoes (or down the aisle at home) before you have. After all, there’s plenty you can learn from others so you don’t have to make mistakes yourself that could cost you and your new spouse time, money, or energy that you can’t afford to spend during the wedding planning process. While some aspects of planning a wedding at home might be obvious such as arranging for catering or renting a dance floor, others like inspecting your HVAC system or renting a portable restroom might not be as intuitive in the wedding planning process for those who don’t work in event planning and related fields.
