5 Tips for planning a backyard wedding ft. Shreya & Gaurav

We knew when we met Shreya and Gaurav about their backyard wedding celebration that it was going to be a great time! You'd be hard pressed to find a couple so in love and excited to be getting married. And looking forward to cracking open a beer at the end of their ceremony!

For their venue, they chose Shreya's family home in Mississauga to host an outdoor ceremony in the backyard. It was a lovely and thoughtful choice for their wedding. But we also knew it would be an interesting challenge.

Backyard wedding ceremonies are a wonderful and intimate way to celebrate with your closest friends and family, but there are a few challenges and things to consider!

Event Schedule

Especially for South Asian, a wedding consists of multiple events! This makes it so important to carefully plan your schedule! Take into account how many events you will be hosting and the requirements for each of those events. This will factor into the planning and decor for your events. And for multiple events, consider the time required to flip the space!

For Shreya and Gaurav, their backyard was completely transformed for their sangeet night! We chose bright colours for the backdrop and made sure the decor went beyond the backdrop to include the trees, cruiser tables and even the floor! Thankfully, we had a whole day to flip the backyard in preparation for the wedding!

Space & Layout

Once you know the requirements for the event your hosting, the next step is to determine your layout. You may need a few different areas for your wedding such as: welcome area, ceremony space, guests seating, food station, bar, and dj booth. In addition, think about the space your photographer and videographer may require to move. Finally, consider the flow of the event for your guests: from where will they enter? how will they find their seats? is there a clear path to the food?

After all this, there may be some special considerations. For Shreya and Gaurav, we needed a clear area for a tv and webcam so their family abroad could take part in the festivities.

Flooring

Backyards often have quite uneven flooring, whether it's grass or pavement. Once you've determined where your guest seating and stage will go, you need to make sure your flooring will work! Is there already a paved area in your backyard that can be used? If not, get flooring! Not only will this be more comfortable for your guests (no need to worry about heels sinking into the grass) but it will be more stable for chairs and for your stage area.

For this wedding, half the yard was paved and made a great seating area for guests. For the mandap, we got floor tiles and had them covered with a vinyl wrap. This gave a clean, elegant look to the entire space and gave a stable platform on which we set up the mandap.

Weather

We, with the couple, took a risk in not getting a tent for the wedding - and boy did it pay off! It was a beautiful, sunny day, and having the mandap in the open backyard looked divine.

That said, we still had two main considerations. The first was that if it rains, we need to protect the food and the dj equipment! Second was shade from the sun! The family decided to use pop up tents in the areas that were most at risk. For the mandap itself, we draped the top to help provide some shade and made sure there were parasols on hand for anyone who needed protection from the sun.

Backyard Obstacles

There are a number of things in a backyard that you might need to work around including: patio furniture, flowerbeds and vegetable gardens, fire pits, etc.

Shreya's backyard features two beautiful trees in the centre of the yard; these trees limited the open space available for the mandap and we had to triple check our measurements to ensure everything would fit. We were able to line up the trees with either side of the mandap. In fact, the trees end up looking like they are part of the decor!

Vendor Team

Photo: Frances_Morency_Photography
Video: Happy Soul Films
Decor: Ted.Co
Outfits: Golden Silk Outlet, Frontier Heritage
Henna: Henna by Teena
Make up: M4Makeup, SSGlamStudios
Cake: Just Temptations
Entertainment: Desi Blaster Entertainment
Turban tying: Safa Turban by Karan
Rings: Kanda Diamonds & Co
Mandap furniture: Mandap.Ca