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Planning an Outdoor Wedding: Choosing the Hardscapes

Planning an outdoor wedding is a lot like decorating a room (or rooms) in your home. 

First, you decide on a theme.  In the case of this wedding, it was "Refined Rustic with a Dash of Merriment".

Then, just like decorating a room, you pick your large pieces first and then add in the punches of color and accessories later. 

In the case of this wedding, we chose the backdrop, the chairs, the dance floor, and the types of tables as our larger pieces. 

We rented outdoor dark bamboo chairs.  They were much more rustic looking than the typical white chairs we all associate with a wedding. 



We ordered a 16x16 foot dance floor from the same rental company.  I don't have any pics from the wedding day, but you can see from this photo I took the next day that the floor was plenty big for people to dance on.  Dancing wasn't a huge part of the reception, but those who wanted to dance had a fun time. 


The backdrop was something my Hubs worked on for several months.  He designed it and built it as a gift to the couple.

He cut saplings from our back woods and arranged them into the pattern he wanted on the ground.  He used metal stakes in the ground to hold the saplings in place while they dried.  He held the wood together at the intersections with tie-wraps and then covered the tie-wraps with rough twine. 

To finish it off, he cut some small trees down and made a cross with the trunks to place behind the structure.  The bride deemed it "Perfect, Daddy!". 


We borrowed tables from a few sources and also used some roadside picked tables for accents. 

Remember this roadside find from a previous post?




You can't see this whole table, but underneath the antique tablecloth is this little beauty.


The last hard scape items we planned were inspired by a photo my daughter had seen on a wedding blog.  It was simply logs cut to varying sizes to use as pot and lantern holders.  Hubs stripped off the loose bark and gave them a quick spray of poly finish to bring out the rich colors of the bark.


So, whether you're decorating a room or a yard, start with the hard scape and work your way up to the colorful additions and accessories.

This week I've linked to:

Furniture Feature Fridays
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Comments

  1. BarbaraOctober 8, 2010 at 7:55 AM

    I'm just loving this series! The backdrop is simply gorgeous and I can see why daughter would deem it PERFECT! Especially liked the cross used for support. And so glad you showed the backdrop in progress -- I wouldn't have had a clue what was involved in putting one together.

    It's obvious how much thought and preparation went into making this wedding so special!

    ReplyDelete
  2. AlexiaOctober 8, 2010 at 11:37 AM

    I still can't get over how fantastic everything looked! I love outdoor weddings and this is the best I've seen!!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Flannel Jammies FarmOctober 8, 2010 at 5:24 PM

    The simple beauty and deep love that went into this wedding amazes me. You did good!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Musings of a HousewifeOctober 8, 2010 at 5:31 PM

    Okay, so the chairs MADE IT. I mean, really. So unexpected, and so perfect. And then the backdrop that Skip built -- just perfect. How special. And I did notice the logs with the lanterns and wondered about how you came up with that. The details of everything are just remarkable. I'm telling everyone about this wedding, just so you know! :-)

    ReplyDelete

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