Styling the ceremony
Midlands Wedding Styling Styling the ceremony
The ceremony space is styled for forty minutes and constrained more tightly than any other part of the day, by access, by the registrar and by the turnaround waiting behind it.
The ceremony room is the shortest-lived and most-photographed styling of the day, and the one with the least room for error, because it is dressed before guests arrive and cleared immediately afterwards.
Aisle width
The constraint that settles most decisions. Anything placed along the aisle narrows it, and venues have a minimum they will accept for access and for the photographer to work.
Ask the venue for the number rather than judging by eye. Then place aisle pieces on alternate rows rather than every row, which reads as full in photographs and leaves the aisle usable.
Arches, backdrops and anything freestanding
The most requested ceremony element and the most rigging-dependent. Establish three things.
Whether the venue permits a structure at the front at all, and where exactly it may stand. Some ceremony rooms have a fixed registrar's table position that cannot move.
Whether it is freestanding and weighted, or fixed to something. Fixing to the fabric of a listed building is generally refused. See venue restrictions.
Who installs and strikes it, and when. An arch that has to come out during the turnaround is competing with everything else in that window.
What the registrar needs
For a civil ceremony, the registrar has requirements that outrank your scheme: a table with clear space to write, seating positioned as they direct, and a private room to see each party separately beforehand.
They will also require that nothing in the room is religious, which extends to readings and music but occasionally catches decorative items. If your scheme includes anything that could read as religious iconography, ask the venue to check with the registrar rather than assuming.
Outdoor ceremonies
Weather is the plan, not the risk. Decide the cutoff time for moving indoors, decide who decides, and dress both spaces or dress the indoor one in a way that can be finished quickly.
Anything outdoors needs weighting rather than propping, because Midlands weather in any month will find a light structure. And check what the venue permits on its grounds, particularly anything pushed into a lawn.
Confetti
Almost always a designated spot outdoors, almost always required to be biodegradable, occasionally prohibited. Ask where rather than whether, and tell your photographer, because the spot is usually chosen for the venue's cleaning rather than for the light.
Reusing ceremony flowers
Sensible and common, and it needs to be someone's explicit job with a stated time inside the turnaround. It cannot happen while guests are in either room.
Ask the florist whether it is included or charged, and ask the venue whether their staff will do it. Both answers are sometimes yes and neither is yes by default. See flowers and foliage and setup and turnaround.
The chairs
If the ceremony is in the same building as the reception, the same chairs are often used twice, which means they are moved and re-dressed during the turnaround. Decide whether they are treated for the ceremony at all, and if so whether the treatment moves with them. See chairs and covers.
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