Weddings At Home: Are They A Good Idea?

If you’re planning on getting married in the near future, you may be trying to decide where to hold your  marriage ceremony.  Traditionally, of course, the most popular wedding site by far has been a church or other religious institution, and the vast majority of weddings still take place in sites like these.  But more and more people are choosing to go for a nontraditional wedding site, for a variety of reasons.  Some of them aren’t particularly religious, while others just want to do something out of the ordinary.  Getting married at the home of the bride or groom is becoming more popular.  But how difficult are weddings at home?  Is one right for you?

There are two main considerations when thinking about weddings at home.  The first one is the size of the guest list.  If you’re hoping for a big wedding, but you have a small home, it’s probably not going to work.  You’ll have to trim your guest list, or go with another location.  And we’re not just talking about how many people can fit comfortably in your house or yard; there’s much more to consider.  Like parking.  Unless you’re going to provide transportation for guests, you’ll need plenty of room at your house on on your street for them to park their vehicles.  Another consideration you may not have thought about is having enough restrooms.  With a large crowd, there will be lots of people needing to use the restroom, many of them at the same time.  Of course, it’s possible to rent portable toilets for the occasion, but you’ll need to budget for that, and find an appropriate place to put them that’s out of the way.

The second main consideration is just how fancy you want your wedding to be.  Unless you live in a mansion, you’ll need to have a scaled down wedding.  There simply won’t be room for everything you need for a huge wedding, like caterers, flower staging, even more additional parking, etc.  These hurdles can be overcome, but it will be tricky, and it will take a lot of planning and probably some additional expense.

But if you’re planning a small wedding ceremony with just a limited guest list, and you’re not hoping to  have an extravagant catered reception, there really isn’t any reason you can’t hold it at your house.  Weddings at home are becoming more customary, and if you keep it small and toned down, a home wedding can be a great choice.