Repeat after me: Neither rain, nor sleet, nor gloom of night will keep me from my appointed wedding.
Planning a wedding is one of the most stressful ventures you will ever survive. A million details must all seem to effortlessly fall into place. There has to be a point where one finally admits defeat and accepts anything fate can throw its way, right? After all, you can't control everything. It's not as if you can control the weather.
Not so fast.
You may not be able to control the weather on your wedding day just yet, but you can take a great number of precautions to ensure that your guests will not even notice that weather was ever a concern to you to begin with.
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| Outdoor Wedding Ceremony |
It's not enough to know in what climate and what time of year you will be getting married. Surprise storms pop up all the time. As a matter of fact, I've never heard of a predicable storm. If you are planning an outdoor wedding or under a pavilion, it is wise to ensure there will be a covered walkway or that your ushers have access to umbrellas. Obviously, make sure there is enough covered space for all of your guests, food, gifts and sound equipment and that there are enough umbrellas to go around. Or that there is a PLAN B location close to the site or at the reception site (if separate). An outdoor summer wedding without cover will require even further rain planning.
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| Outdoor Wedding - Uncovered |
One major common oversight is the walking space between key areas. If the wedding is held outdoors and a rain storm moves in, the ground could quickly turn into a mud slide. Keep in mind that if the storm takes a turn for the worse, you'll need a place for your guests to hide-out under cover or in their vehicles until the clouds part.
Wedding in the winter? Ensure that your ceremony/reception site is equipped with snow shovels and that your trusty ushers or venue coordinator knows how to use them. A bag of coarse salt or organic cat litter are excellent cures for slippery sidewalks. It provides enough traction for walking on and cleans up well.
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| Winter Wedding |
Quite simply, you can't plan for every wedding day weather. The day will turn out to be whatever it will -- rain, snow, hail, sunshine, thunder and all. The trick is to make it look as though you knew what was going to happen all along and that you were ready for it. Then laugh off how little you were really in control years later.