7 Tips to Plan Your Winter Wedding
Winter weddings are becoming increasingly popular. There is something magical about them. The cosiness of the season is hugely romantic and inviting. But there are unique aspects to this season, which you need to keep in mind when planning your wedding. To avoid getting caught up and caught out by your winter wedding, here are some things you must consider and remember.
1. Accessorise to Stay Warm
It’s easy to be blinded by the thought of buying your dream wedding dress and forget to think about the weather. While you don’t have to wear a full bodysuit or thermal underwear for a winter wedding, you should invest in accessories to keep warm. You’ll spend time a reasonable amount of time outdoors, and you don’t want to start shivering while you do so!
Tights under your wedding dress can be a good idea (as long as the dress is long!) and you can have quirky boots to wear outdoors and more traditional heels to swap to indoors. To cover up when going outdoors, opt for a faux fur stole, a pashmina wrap or a chic cardie. Don’t forget that long sleeve wedding dresses are a thing, and they look beautiful!
For the groom, best man, and others involved in the wedding, velvet or tweed can be a good fabric to consider. They are both warm, cosy and stylish, ensuring you look great and stay warm.
2. Prepare for Guests’ Coats and Jackets
Just as you will be wearing those extra layers, your guests are also going to show up in jackets and coats, assuming they’ve planned for winter! Make sure to talk with the wedding venue about where you can leave these. While most modern wedding venues will have a cloakroom option, you need to figure out whether you will have someone taking care of this for you, or whether you’ll have an area closed to just you and your guests that you can manage yourselves.
If your venue doesn’t have space or it’s unavailable, you might be able to buy or hire hanging rails to place near the entrance of the venue. Venues that are starting to specialise in winter weddings are likely to have these in hand, but ensure you prepare for them all the same.
3. Allow Extra Time for Travel for Your Winter Wedding
When it comes to logistics, winter weddings can be tricky. The weather is much more unpredictable in the winter and changes in it can cause more problems than a summer shower might do. It’s essential to factor it into your plan, and if you’re not holding all parts of your wedding in the same place, leave more extra time for getting from place A to place B.
4. Consider the Lighting
It is more common than you might think for winter wedding couples to overlook lighting issues. Winter days are much shorter; if you’re planning to take wedding photos outdoors, keep this in mind. You need to plan your ceremony earlier to allow for time for outdoor photos while it’s light. If that’s not a concern you can have outside photos after dark, they just take a little more set up. Another options is to do a ‘first look’ and get couples photos before the ceremony, while you have the day light. Here are some great tips for Perfect Wedding Day timings.
A lack of natural light can even play a role indoors. Certain venues might let in a lot of natural light in during the summer, but the winter view may be much darker and you need to be prepared for it. There are many ways you can brighten a dark room, without relying on overhead lights. Fairy light walls look wonderful and add mood, uplights around the room can bring colour and light. It’s always a good idea to talk this through with your wedding photographer to ensure you don’t end up with badly lit photos.
5. Keep Guests Entertained Indoors for Your Winter Wedding
In terms of wedding entertainment, most, if not all, of the action will take place indoors. You don’t really want to make your guests stand outside in the cold just for a few lawn games. As no one is eager to go out, you also have to ensure there is enough entertainment indoors. Bored guests are not something any of us want at our wedding.
If there is one-thing guests remember from weddings, it tends to be the music. A good wedding band can entertain in so many ways, they can lift the mood in the room and ads a certain groove to the day. Guests don’t even have to dance, although you want to have a dance floor for those that want to, just listening to an entertaining group singing classic or modern songs in your chosen genre is fun enough.
Another fun thing you can do at a Winter wedding, that is harder to do at other times of the year, is sparklers. Because it is dark earlier it’s much easier to get all your guests involved in sparklers outside. Why not make your entrance into dinner a sparkly one?
6. Check the Venue’s Winter Décor Policies
You might be planning your big day in close proximity to Christmas. While this is a popular choice for many couples, that doesn’t necessarily mean you want a huge Christmas tree in your wedding photos. Some venues are mindful of this and won’t go too over the top with their own Christmas décor, but others may have decorations and lights, so depending on your preferences you should make sure you ask your venue what they’re going to have, so you can work around that or make your own style choices.
7. Planning Your Winter Wedding – Don’t Get Caught Out!
It’s important to take note of these special Winter quirks to ensure you have the smoothest of a wedding. Winter is a magical time for throwing a wedding – you just have to remember you’re planning a Winter wedding and not just a wedding!
Hope this has given some great ideas for preparing for Winter weddings. Why not share your ideas and plans for your Winter wedding?
Thanks for popping by,
Fiona x
Thanks for sharing this. These ideas will help me in my winter wedding.