Season, light and weather
Midlands Wedding Styling Season, light and weather
The month you marry changes the light in the room, what is available to put in it, and what the weather will do to anything outdoors. It is a bigger variable than the scheme.
Two identical schemes in May and in November produce different rooms, and most of the difference is light.
The hour you actually use the room
Visit the venue at the time of day and, if possible, the time of year you will be using it. Nothing else tells you as much.
A room with west-facing windows at six in the evening in June is full of warm low light and needs almost nothing. The same room at four in the afternoon in November is grey and needs lighting to be anything at all. See lighting.
This one visit changes the lighting budget more than any conversation with a supplier.
Flowers by season
The lever with the biggest effect on cost and the one most often ignored. Building the scheme from what is genuinely good in your month, rather than specifying a stem and asking someone to source it, produces a better result for less. Flowers from the Farm is a useful starting point for British availability and for growers in the Midlands.
Spring brings bulbs and blossom, early summer the peak of garden roses and peonies, high summer sweet peas and cosmos, late summer dahlias and grasses, autumn foliage, berries and hydrangea, winter evergreens, hellebores and forced bulbs.
Peonies have a short British window that does not stretch, and it is the request that most often turns into an expensive import. See flowers and foliage.
Heat, and what it does to a room
Midlands summers now produce genuine heat, and a dressed room with a hundred and twenty people in it holds it. Practical consequences: flowers wilt in a marquee faster than anyone expects, candles soften, and guests move outdoors, which means the outdoor space matters more than the tables you spent the budget on.
Ask about ventilation and shade, and put water on the tables regardless of what the bar is doing.
Cold, damp and dark
From October, three things change. The room needs light. Outdoor ceremonies and drinks need a plan that is not a hope. And anything hired that lives outside, signage, aisle pieces, lanterns, has to survive rain and wind rather than merely tolerate them.
Weight everything outdoors rather than propping it. See signage and stationery.
Wet weather plans
Not an afterthought. Decide the alternative space, decide the cutoff time for the decision, and decide who makes it, which should be the venue rather than you on the morning.
Dress the indoor alternative to a standard you would accept, or dress it in a way that can be finished in twenty minutes. A wet weather plan that requires an hour of work is a plan nobody will execute. See ceremony styling.
Off-peak
Midweek dates and the months from November to March move prices with suppliers as well as venues, and availability opens up considerably. Winter weddings also suit the schemes that are cheapest to execute well: candlelight where permitted, evergreen and dried material, heavy linen, low light.
If budget is the constraint rather than the date, this is where the room and the money agree with each other. See budget.
Published