Having a wedding at home (some tips!)

Minesh planned the most meaningful proposal for us, I could not have dreamed of anything more fitting. My high school crush asked me to marry him on our ten year dating anniversary. We were standing completely alone in the very place that we first met: outside our old headteacher's office, in the foyer of our old school, surrounded by all my favourite foods which had set up ready for a red-carpeted-candle-lit dinner. I was in awe. Park High School, I now owe you so much more than just my GCSE grades!

A few months of celebrating our engagement later (we really milked it ha), we sat down to start planning the wedding.

O k a y.

As it was such a personal and meaningful proposal, we wanted to carry on and get married somewhere equally as meaningful to us and our story so far. Therefore chosing the venue was an easy for me. After getting the approval from our parents, doing some measuring of my parent's back garden and committing to how many people we could therefore invite to each event, we were done.

I admit we were very lucky to have families happy to accommodate our dream of an intimate backyard wedding - they gave us a priceless tip on how not to offend people too. We called some friends and family before committing to final plans to ask them a) for their opinion on our idea to have a traditional wedding at home and b) check it would be ok not invite everyone we would like in order to keep the wedding intimate. Thankfully everyone was really supportive and understood we would be restricted when extending invitations.

We invited as per below:

Pre-wedding function: we basically invited everyone we could + 10% of the hall capacity.

Indian Wedding: our parent's parents, parent's siblings, their children (our first cousins) and our friends*.

Civil Toast: our parent's parents, parent's siblings, their grandchildren** (our nieces and nephews) and our friends*.

*friends invites were the hard part for me. I ended up having to explain to some of my closest friends that I wouldn't invite their other halves until after I knew if we could accommodate our immediate family as my family is very big and a very very important part of my life. As a general rule, I separated +1s into those who Min and I had had dinner with in the last 6 months, vs those we hadn't. Luckily everyone was really understanding and supportive, so that made this easier.

**If grandchildren were under 10 (only 4 under 10s), their parents were called separately to invite them too.

We applied for a TEN (Temporary Event Notice) from the council which was approved within a few days of applying online. It's not really needed if you're having your event on property that you own (i.e. not council property) but it's really helpful for 1) peace of mind and 2) contacting the police and neighbours to get their approval to have a night-night-loud-music-highly-emotive party at home. Yep, our family’s triplets and I went to our neighbours (10 neighbours in all 4 directions) to speak to them about the wedding a week beforehand - I was VERY nervous about this but everyone were genuinely very happy and supportive! The chocolates helped.

In order to have it at home we also had to hire outdoor toilets (Thank you, JustLoos!) and a Generator (which we hired through Stretch & Tent). It took a while to work out where to have both of these without taking up space in the garden and decreasing our venue size. Our next door neighbour’s were a godsend for offering us their front drive!

Looking back at the wedding photos now, I realise we forgot to cover up the microwave in the kitchen and the hose pipe on the wall of the house in the garden. They have both made some fun little appearances in our photos! Cover them up if you prefer not to see them ;-), but I quite like the way they make our photos and videos look like a real home video.  

We got married in July in the UK, so even though it’s “Summer”, the wedding was always an unpredictable factor. We put 10 umbrellas around the sides of the marquee. They were black so looked quite fun but also came in REALLY handy at night. Thank you to the sun gods who waited until we had started drinking at 9pm to open up the heavens rather than raining all day like BBC weather / iPhone weather / and AccuWeather had implied would happen. You can't control the weather no matter how many times you refresh apps and sing the rain song, but everything happens for a reason.

I can’t think of anything else to add as tips to anyone else considering having a wedding at home, but if there is please just ask! 

P.S. I know Backyard is an American term but it has a better ring to it than Back Garden :-)

Priya

xx