DIY Wedding: The Venue

8. A great way to save some money is to have your ceremony & reception at the same location. This way you only have to pay for the rental of one building. (You could also consider asking friends & family if they would host the wedding on their property; that way you might not have to pay ANY rental fee!)

My husband and I both love the outdoors and have been on countless backpacking, hiking, camping & road trips. It was a no brainer for us to have an outdoor ceremony

We knew we wanted to get married under a large tree (preferably oak, but we would take what we could get). We ended up with the perfect venue: a small farm with a large pasture and a very large tree in the back.

The ceremony would be in the back pasture by the tree and the reception would be closer in toward the barn (there was an area of lawn with nice sod between the barn and the pasture). Everything was to be outside: the ceremony, the dinner, the dance, everything.

Well, everything except the dessert table and a slide show that were set up inside with a few high-top tables for hors d'oeuvres. The barn also had a beautiful chandelier in the loft that I am ashamed we didn't get more use out of except for a few photo-ops. Keep an eye out for my DIY Wedding: Photographers post where I will include pictures of me & my hus dancing under the chandelier.

(Warning: I would only recommend having an outdoor wedding to folks who are laid back and calm, & ones that have a definite rain-plan. The stress that comes with planning an outdoor wedding can be dangerous. If you chose to plan an outdoor wedding please do your best to avoid becoming a bride or groomzilla, or even worse, a blubbery mess of anxiety and hostility that rises and falls with the weather forecast.)

*As a side-note the weather forecast for our wedding day was 70% chance of thunderstorms. Luckily for us, it stormed in most surrounding areas and our wedding was perfectly overcast the entire day.