Reader Question: Wedding Day Timeline

Reader Question: I was wondering if you could post a timeline of the days leading up to the wedding. I am especially in search of one for the wedding day.

I'll have to work on a lead-up to the wedding timeline (I have one, but I want to fiddle with it a bit so it more accurately depicts what actually happened).  So, for now, here is our wedding day timeline (including stuff other people were doing and stuff we (P and me) were doing).  I've given the timeline that we thought we'd go by and made a note if that thing actually ended up happening at a later time.

An Illustrated Wedding Day Timeline

8:00 am - Breakfast at the B&B  (Wedding party plus P & me)
9:30 am Meet at house to continue set up  -Menfolk, plus my parents and some assorted family
9:30 am Women at B&B for hair, getting ready, finishing up flowers w/photographer (we had our hair person come to us, which was just as cheap as us going there because she didn't have to pay for her stall rental).

11:00 am Prep salads & apps - Mom and assorted friends and family at the house
12:00 pm Men get ready for pictures at the house - Groomsmen plus P

1:o0 pm Meet for pictures at the B&B (Wedding party plus us)  

3:30 pm Back to house for family pictures - Us, wedding party, family
4:15 pm Set up apps & drinks in backyard and water in front - Designated friend helpers
4:30 pm People arrive, greet people - Everyone

5:00 pm Ceremony starts - We based this on when we thought it would start cooling down.

6:00 pm Drinks, apps, and fun

6:45 pm Buffet starts (Actually ended up starting around 7:15 pm)

7:30 pm Cut pie (Dinner actually ended up taking longer than we thought so this actually happened around 8:30)

7:30 pm Dancing music (Actually ended up starting a bit after 8:30--immediately after cake/pie).

We wrapped up just around midnight, though most folks were gone by then and it was mostly the people were were spending the night there after about eleven or so.

Reader Question: How many toilets is enough?

A version of a question I'm commonly asked by readers:

Question:
I am planning on having my wedding ceremony and reception in my parent's backyard.  I was wondering if you have any advice on bathrooms.  We are planning on having about 150 guests and my parents only have 1 restroom. Rather than having all the guests go all over the house looking for a bathroom, we were wondering if you had any suggestions or if 1 bathroom would suffice.

My answer:

We had this debate as well. My parent's bathroom is sort of tempermental so we ended up renting a toilet.  It actually wasn't gross at all (it was the rental company's special "wedding toilet") and one was plenty for the 100 guests we had.  I was just at another wedding that had around 120 guests and their 1 toilet was a lot busier than ours seemed, but the line was never too long (maybe 2 people at most). I'd say you could probably get by with one if you trust your plumbing!

No bugs were invited to my wedding

There could be no bugs around and a mosquito will find me. There will be twenty people standing around with not a single bug bite, and I'll have a mosquito bite for every one of them. I do not like bugs.

So when you asked if we had a plan for how to keep bugs off our guests, I think my first thought was that I'm the best bug repellent anyone could ask for. They all fill up on me and leave others alone. But obviously we needed a better plan than that, particularly since my parent's have a creek in their backyard that creates a larger than normal mosquito population.
The first thing we did was to have the torches we used to light the yard contain citronella oil. Not the most pleasant smell, but it served its purpose. Second we set up a small table of bathroom supplies near our toilet (tampons, lotion, condoms, and...bug spray). We bought a natural, non-cancer causing, reproductive-harm-inducing, spray from our natural food co-op.

I've tried several natural bug repellents and All Terrain Herbal Armor is the best that I've found. I even took it with me when I went to the jungle on my honeymoon and stayed (mostly) mosquito bite free.

So that's what we did to keep the bugs out. And for the most part it seemed to work. I didn't get a single bug bite all night!

Q&A: How do you light a backyard?

The variety of ways we lit the yard are some of my more favorite design elements from our wedding. It's kind of scary to think about lighting a large yard, but it ended up being fairly easy and cheap.

Because we were trying to conserve power for the DJ equipment, we knew we couldn't go overboard with electric lights. So we started with candles. Each dinner table had three candles in jars or other assorted vintage glassware. The dessert table was filled up with candles as well.


Since we were trying to keep people from wandering off into the depths of my parent's yard we created a border around the lawn by hanging candles in mason jars from sheperd's hooks. The mason jars were acquired off of Freecycle, but they were basically used peanut butter and pasta sauce jars. And we found shepherd's hooks at JoAnns Fabric for really cheap last summer (they were something like 75% off). We're going to use both the hooks and the candle jars in our yard this summer.
Since we figured most people would be on or near the dancefloor by the time it was really dark, that was lit a few ways. First, we had torches around the edge of the pool & seating area. In a big tree that overhangs the dance floor we hung up more of the mason jars with candles in them.
My parents already had lights strung up around their patio and around the hot tub deck/DJ area so we turned those on as well. And of course we had the floating candles in the pool and the fire pit, which I'm still on a quest for a picture of!

For the main part of the yard, we rented white lights. We were originally going to buy lights, but renting long strands cost us around $2/strand, which was cheaper than anywhere we could purchase them.

My cousin and P. dug small holes in the lawn and stuck posts in the ground. I've seen people use buckets with sand or some other thing to weight down the posts, but digging holes seemed more secure. He attached the lights to the poles and the house and that was it! I think we rented four strands for the yard. Each strand was attached in three places (two posts and the house).

This last picture really seems to show most of the different lighting elements we used. Nothing was glaringly bright, but it had a nice glow to it.

Q&A: Did you have a backup plan for rain?

I've had a few people ask if we had a backup plan for rain, considering our entirely outdoor wedding.

Those of you who have been around since the pre-wedding days will remember that no, we did not have a rain backup plan. Which in hindsight was kind of crazy. Really my only huge wedding panic was when I checked the ten day forecast and saw a 30% chance of rain on both Friday and Saturday. And it wasn't a small panic. It was a full-blown panic where I cried on the couch while my husband and mom tried to call every indoor venue in town to get them to agree to be backup and put a tent on hold kind of panic.

But I did learn a few things from the experience:

1) If you pick your wedding day specifically because it has never historically rained on that day (like me), keep in mind that global warming is making everything funky and still plan a backup. But chances are that it's not going to rain. In fact we were much more worried (and prepared) for a glaringly hot day, but the rain on Friday (it did rain a bit), cooled everything down so it actually ended up perfect.

2) The first tent rental company we called quoted us $3187 and wouldn't hold a tent without a deposit. That created more panic since our total wedding budget was $10k. My mom called our port-o-potty rental company because they'd been really nice and asked them if they knew of anyone else in town who rented tents. They gave us the number of a mom and pop tent rental company who quoted us $1000 for the same tent and told us that they were sure it wasn't going to rain so they'd hold the tent for me up until the day before the wedding for free (at which point they called me to congratulate me and my lack of rain). So call around. I know tents are usually insanely expensive, but sometimes going through referrals from other vendors works.

3) Finding an indoor venue to hold a space for you last minute is near impossible. Nobody who we got in touch with had room (or would admit to it).

If we had needed to, in a pinch we could have fit everyone into my parent's house (we would have put the furniture in the garage). It wouldn't have been the most comfortable wedding ever, but it would have worked.

So the bottom line is that I probably should have had some sort of backup plan, but that ultimately if there is a 2% chance of rain on your wedding day, it's probably not going to rain and you, like me, can probably squeak by without a backup.

Funny enough one of the most memorable things that was said at our ceremony was when our friend remarked that she'd been to several themed weddings that summer and that while our wedding didn't have a theme, if it did she'd say it was the glow of sunshine.

Parking

Because our wedding was at a home, we had limited space for parking on site. One of the many dilemmas of having a backyard wedding.

Since shuttles from hotels weren't in our budget, we decided to ask the elementary school just down the street from my parent's home if people could park there. Honestly, I wasn't very hopeful. I can't imagine that it's great for liability to have a bunch of people parking on school grounds who will be attending a big party. But my mom asked, and surprisingly they were totally fine with it. They even put it on their office calendar in case any teachers showed up that day and were alarmed by the number of cars in the lot.

(School bus photo via Elizabeth Anne Designs)

When we sent out the invitations they included a quick note about where to park and mentioned that those who couldn't make the short walk were welcome to park in my parent's driveway.

All in all this worked out well, and might be a good option for some of you having an at-home wedding (or really any wedding with no on-site parking and a large parking lot nearby that you know will be empty on weekends).