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.
