I have a love and a personal connection tor “at home weddings”!  Now I admit the only “at home” wedding I have planned was my own, but it’s something that I wish more couples would choose to do.  I find it very personal to be married somewhere that has such meaning to the couple.  But with that being said there is a lot that goes into a at home wedding.  I will be the first to say there so much more planning goes into such an event.

When a couple entertains the idea to have their wedding and reception at home there are many things they need to taken into account to make sure that the site will work perfectly for the event.  First thing you need to look at is the number of people you want to invite and make sure you have the space to accommodate those numbers.  Will you have enough space for your ceremony, cocktail hour, and reception?  When my now husband and I compiled our invite list, I will admit it was quite long between all our family and friends.  Most would say we needed to cut because we could not accommodate the numbers that we had for a formal sit down meal that we wanted.  But we never do things the easy way!!  We designed a plan that we could still have our very intimate wedding and formal reception with just very close family and friends (64 guests) followed by a larger informal reception with our addition guest list the following evening (180 guests).   With some creativity and detail planning we were able to achieve the best of both worlds.

The next thing to take a look at is where on the property would the ceremony and reception be hosted?  Are you going to host the wedding, cocktail hour, and reception all in the same location?  Or are you going to have it split up onto different areas of the property?  We choose to have each part of our wedding in different locations.  Since we live on Miner Lake, it was very important to us to have our ceremony lakeside.  This was then followed by cocktails and hors d’oeuvres on our patio.  And lastly, dinner was served family style in our finished walkout basement.  We choose to have all the guests sitting at one large table so we could capture that true feeling of one huge family eating together.  For the next evening we were able to utilize our large yard, patio, and basement for the larger party. Guest tables were set up on the lawn; cocktail tables and a bar for beer and wine were set up on the patio near the DJ booth; and finally addition guest tables, another bar with wine and liquor, and a buffet of comfort food (and a special table filled with kid friendly food!) was set up in the walkout basement.   And we decided to add another element to the reception to help parents relax a bit during the evening.  We turned our front yard and formal living room into a children’s paradise with games, arts &crafts, and outdoor activities that were manned by teenagers in the neighborhood.

Also an addition item to look at is what you will need to bring in for rental items for the occasion…  This means tables (of all kinds), chairs, linens, dishes, bar set ups, sound system, ECT.  These are all items that you get traditionally with a rented venue.  I will warn you depending on the items you pick, they costs of rentals might be higher than if you had choose to have the wedding and reception at customary venues.  I know our rental items alone made up 40% of our wedding budget between for the two day event.

Another item to consider is back up plans!!  Yes we all need them because we do live in West Michigan and the weather changes at a whim…  If you’re having the ceremony and or reception outside what are the plans for rain?  Our plan was simple.  If it had rained, we would have moved the actually ceremony to our church in Allegan.  And then our cocktail hour would have been in our formal living room with dinner still being served in our walkout.  But the next day was tricky to say the least.  Our backup plan for our second reception consisted of TWO tents.  We had decided that if rain was to impose on our celebration, then we would rent one large tent for our adult guests and a smaller one for the children.  I’m very happy to say we didn’t have to go to Plan B, but it’s better to be ready then not to be.

And finally the last advice I can give you is make sure you communicate to your guest about the formality of your wedding.  Like I said in the beginning of this posting our actual wedding and first reception was very formal, where our second reception was not.  What we choose to do is send out two different invites. Those that were invited to both wedding and the formal reception (along with the informal invite for the following evening) received an invite stating a “Formal Sit Down Reception to Follow”. Whereas the following evenings invited stated “Informal Backyard Reception”. This helped our guest understand how each evening was intended so they could plan on what to pack for their attire the weekend.

Now I could go on forever on all the items that you need to think about, but these were the top ones for us.  If you have any questions about how you go about planning an at home outdoor wedding, please contact me and I will share with you my experience!  Happy Planning!!

Below are some of my favorite shots from the weekend!  Thanks goes out to H&K Photography for capturing some wonderful moments for us!