I didn’t have as many problems planning an outside wedding as I thought I would. It wasn’t as expensive as an indoor wedding would have been. Since we had the beauty of nature all around us, it wasn’t too expensive to decorate. I checked out a lot of places to have our summer wedding and reception. I could have had our wedding ceremony on the beach, with a fun filled beach party reception, or an elegant garden party, but I chose a ceremony and reception in the park. I found several perfect parks that would work fine for our wedding day.
I wasn’t really sure where to start, so I shopped around for some much needed suggestions. When you plan to be married in the great outdoors, it seems you have to have a backup plan just in case the weather turns from sunny to pouring buckets. So we arranged to have a tent set up to move the ceremony into if necessary, just as a precaution.
Plan “A” was setting up a gorgeous trellis for our ceremony to be performed under and canopies for the reception. I mainly concentrated on the decorations for our wedding table and the reception tables. With the park as our main theme, I basically had to make sure I had our table settings and maybe throw in a few extra bouquets of flowers. I decided to go with artificial flowers because I didn’t want to have our wedding to be the target of a bee swarm. The only way you could tell that the flowers were artificial, was by touch, they were beautiful. Although planning wasn’t as difficult a chore as I thought, there were quite a few things to take care of. You want to make sure you have plenty of citronella candles scattered about, and that the rest rooms are within walking distance, and make sure your frosting on your cake doesn’t melt in the heat.
As far as table décor, I found so many fantastic accessories for our reception. I had little park bench place card holders at each table setting, and little citronella votive candles in glass globes with a nice flower arrangement as our centerpieces. I found very decorative favor boxes and used them to package the chrome bottle openers we bought for our friends and family as a summer wedding theme. For our wedding table, of course, was our fabulous wedding cake with a very unique wedding cake topper.
I found it while browsing online for my other wedding accessories, and fell in love with it. They were especially customized for the bride and groom. After I sent them a head shot of my fiance and myself they made our bride and groom topper to look exactly like us. Talk about the best wedding keepsake you can get. All of our guests were so impressed with our topper, they couldn’t stop talking about it. Everything I ordered for our ceremony and reception was the best in wedding accessories, especially our crystal champagne flutes and silver cake serving set. It’s unbelievable all the lovely accessories you can purchase from you computer.
Well, the wedding was beautiful and the reception was just as perfect. Thank goodness the weather stayed perfect throughout the entire ceremony and reception and we never had to put plan B into action. We all loved the super DJ and the fantastic job he was doing, and if I’m right, he probably kept the music and dancing going on for quite a while after we left to go on our honeymoon. There were many good comments about our beautiful wedding ceremony and fun filled reception party we had. I couldn’t have picked a better place than the park for our wedding ceremony and reception party. If we should decide somewhere down the line to have a renewal wedding ceremony, I think I’d like to have it in the park again.