You just spent months dreaming and organizing. You dedicated every hour of your free-time, talking about it with your partner all the time, trying to avoid non-requested advices from relatives and friends, or asking professional help with every detail’s pianification and management… Then, the long awaited moment arrives, and everything is challenged by one of the most common fear of future brides and grooms: bad weather!

Sure, the chances of having rain at your wedding depends on place and season. If you’re having a winter wedding, your venue is probably indoors and bad weather won’t afflict your day that much, except for really extraordinary situations. But if you get married in open-air and rely on a shiny sun, be careful! Unfortunately, seasons are getting more and more uncertain and unpredictable, and the weather will always be that one thing nobody has control upon.

That being said, don’t be afraid: is still possible to take some preventative measures and decide in advance what to do in case of very bad weather, so that it won’t ruin your wedding day.

Follow our suggestions to live a moment you’ll remember with extreme happiness – no matter the weather!

What to do if it rains at my wedding? 

First of all, let’s be clear: you should consider these indications way long before the big day, actually from the very first pianification steps. Last-minute magical solutions that make everything so beautiful and romantic in movies aren’t real – or at least they happen very rarely. When organizing a wedding, one must be realistic and practical, and prevent everything that could go wrong in order to fully enjoy the moment without any concern.

We think there are two main rules for preventing rain’s consequences on your wedding day:

  1. The most important thing is… Don’t be discouraged! To do that, don’t ingnore the chance to meet bad weather. Be conscious of the fact that it could rain on your wedding day, period. It doesn’t matter if it’s summer or you’re getting married in a very dry area. Don’t think about this chance as a negative thing or a stressor. I know, it’s not nice to have this big unknow variable and don’t know how the weather is going to be like on your wedding day, but you do have a great advantage: you can plan in advance any possible solution and you won’t have to improvise anything. You have full control over that.
  2. Set a plan B that is as nice and valid as plan A. In other words: the solution in case of rain shouldn’t be just taking everything that’s outside and putting it inside. Remember: if rain really comes, that’s your wedding anyways. You don’t want to celebrate it in a place you don’t like, do you? Maybe you won’t think about it during the moment, but when you’ll look back at pictures you may regret not having had much attention for alternative spaces.

What’s the wedding planner’s job in these situations? Reassuring the newlyweds, taking charge of finding the best solution for any weather accident. Guaranteeing a quality plan B, and that could be accomplished thanks to his/her knowledge and experience.

But if you don’t want a wedding planner, in the next paraghaphs you’ll find a few ideas and things to consider to be prepared in case of rain. 

Rain and open-air wedding reception

In this case, spending hours and hours in an outside venue at night or with cold wind is not an option. During the site inspection, make sure that the venue you like so much has a few nice and functional spaces inside as well. Whether it’s an hotel, a castel, a mansion or a restaurant, check for: a dining room for your reception; an area for aperitif and maybe for the cake cutting; some nice spot to have nice pictures (maybe ask the wedding planner or the photographers for advice). In general, find a few separated spaces for all the main moments of your wedding, and be careful for passing and loading/unloading areas for guests, suppliers and materials.

Finally, try to picture the internal areas with all the decorations you’ll have for the external venue. Is everything looking good? It’s not alway possible to replicate the same exact atmosphere (just think at how the lights can change everything!). Use your creativity and try to imagine new ways to decorate spaces. The goal here is not to duplicate the outside, but to valorize and embellish the interior, even if that means making some change in the style or in the final effect.

And if your legal wedding was supposed to be outside…

Things are slighlty different when we talk about the ceremony. 

If you are finally realizing your dream for a beach wedding or if you choose a wedding with legal value in an oper-air location, don’t get stuck on the image of a beautiful moment in a perfect weather. There’s an actual chance that there’s going to be a grey sky, or even worst, large clouds filled with rain. Of course there are some location with proper shelters, where in case of bad weather you can still have your open-air ceremony.

Apart from the place, you should also consider the kind of guests you’re inviting and the style of your wedding. Are there going to be mostly young and sporty people? Or did you invited many families with children, less prone to tolerate the rain? In a small wedding it’s easier to find nice solutions, maybe using a few transparent umbrellas (if the rain isn’t too hard); but if you are many people, more of them will feel discomfort in tolerating bad weather.

As for the style, with an elegant wedding is going to be more difficult to hadle clothes, shoes and hairstyles. So I would suggest you to check in advance where the closest and most accessible indoor place is, so that you and your guests don’t have to totally alter your plans. If we’re talking about a legal wedding instead of a symbolic ceremony, probably the City Council has more than one space available to let you have your wedding indoors. It’s always better to check this as well, maybe take a look at the location and start to think about how you could use the decoration to personalize it.

SIf you need more advice or you feel that’s too much to handle on your own, please contact me here.