Backyard Wedding

Congratulations on your wedding. Firstly, take a look at what gathering restrictions will be and your local bylaws. You may become limited for people, times and setting up certain things such as large tents. Then think of your vendors, can you have food delivered and use your friends/family to serve the rest of your guests - this will help keep the level of outside people that will take away from your amount of guests. (Our son and good friends have volunteered to do this).

Think of your seating - 6 feet apart - tables will be per household - so you need to think of how that will be arranged (my biggest issue)

We have decided 25 (red to green Ontario coding is allowed) in our backyard. Just going to tarp over the yard as renting tents can be costly.

The bar will not be a server, we will be doing a help yourself but it will be only individual servings. Every table will have a bottle of red & white wine and a large bottle of water. We will be going around to have an individual toast with of our guests which we will pour/serve.

Wishing you the best of luck!

Inquire about tent since the weather will effect when you decide to have the celebrations and rentals for china, cutlery etc., catering plated or individual packaged to avoid any issues of Covid. Heaters in case to keep your guests warm.

Some things I found helpful were to consider where everyone is going to park ahead of time, is the house owner is okay with people using their washroom or will you have to rent one, you can rent a tent and tables and may need a permit for the tent (where I am it's based on tent size and if it's under a certain size you don't need a permit), make sure you let the neighbors know so you don't get a noise complaint if you play music louder than normal.

Just be mindful that any staff you need that the venue normally provides with the space (bartenders, servers, cleaning crew) will now count towards your gathering limit. And you'll need a permit to set up a tent if you want a covering in case of bad weather. Without a tent, you can't just move your party indoors if it rains or else you'll be in violation of gathering limits.

We downsized and had a small beach wedding with only our wedding party and immediate family. Having a very specific "guest" list made it a lot easier to explain to other friends and family why they weren't invited, had we said "were only inviting certain friends and select family" people would have been hurt. We made sure the people we wanted there most had "roles" (witnesses, bridesmaids, groomsmen, someone in charge of zoom etc). Even with that list my mom did have a few family members who were upset they didn't make the cut.


I would also recommend keeping whatever traditional elements *you* want. It might seem silly to wear your fancy dress in a backyard, but you'll be glad you did! If you want amazing photos still hire a photographer even if it's only for a short time. If a father daughter dance is important to you then dance with your dad in the grass. It's still your wedding no matter how small!

Our original date was feb 27,2021 which we postponed last fall to October 2021. Although we changed our plans to do a small intimate 10 person elopement this June as we are sick of the unknown! I was really excited for the June wedding up until the past few weeks with this new lockdown...now I’m wondering if we will even be able to have our 10 person wedding that I’ve been planning since February 😒 at this point we are sick of postponing so will continue to either way, even if it’s just the two of us- although the thought of that is upsetting for sure