Spring and summer are typically the most popular times of the year to hold a wedding. Many love the idea of having an outdoor wedding. If you have a large enough yard or one of your family members does you could consider having the wedding there. There are also several additional things that you can do in order to keep your outdoor wedding affordable.
Keep the guest list simple
There are some who really tend to go overboard for their weddings, by inviting friends of friends, and people they really don’t know. Instead why not keep your affair simple. This will certainly save your budget. A reasonable amount of people for a backyard wedding is about 50. Of course if you have a large family you may have to go over a bit, but as long as it it under 100 the price tag still should not be too bad.
A cold dish menu and Barbecue
Start by planning the menu with cold food and Barbecue dishes. This is typically the easiest to prepare and can also keep your budget low. You can start with having items like a variety of salads. There are lots of salads to choose from, so choose one that will hold up in the great outdoors. You can also have cocktail shrimp, and fresh fruit. To keep the items cool you can keep them in the fridge in the house you are using for the wedding, until you are ready to serve them. I would definitely assign some relatives to handle this aspect of the wedding so you don’t have to worry about it. It usually only takes a few minutes to bring out the food any way. For your main meat choice you can have a designated chef (a relative who is good at cooking on the grill), cook up some burgers and chicken, or even fish if you want to go a bit fancier. These items can be made to order, so that nothing is wasted.
Ceremony and reception area
Have one section for the ceremony another for the reception. This will really add a special touch to your outdoor wedding. You will probably need to rent some chairs for this so that they are all uniform. You can set up one section of the yard just for the ceremony. Using an arch that you can get married under as the main focus in front of the chairs. When it is time to eat you can have several long tables (which you can also rent and set up for eating. Invest in a few cloth table clothes and your reception area is just about finished.
Simple Table decorations
You can start by purchasing the silverware, from your local warehouse store like Costco. You can buy the amount in bulk. Of course this is only if you want the fancy look. Using clear plastic fork and knives will also keep the look fancy, and affordable for everyone. In the center of the table you can use candles which will add a nice elegant touch. Try to find candles that match your overall wedding theme. Another suggestion is to go with the fruit in the vase look. You have probably seen this before and it is very easy to replicate. If for example if you have red as part of your wedding color themes, go with red apples which you can mix with another fruit to keep it nice and healthy.
Clothesline memory photos
A great special touch is to add photos of the happy couple when they were dating and even as kids to the yard. This can easily be done, by adding a clothes line cross the yard and using clothes pins to hold the pictures onto the clothes line. You can even have more than one clothes line strung up across the yard
