Your Wedding Planning absolutely must include all environmental considerations - which are an integral part of all wedding ceremonies. Ignore this and risk disaster. Better yet, contact us before you decide so you can have 2nd opinion about the issues for which you might need to be prepared.

COMFORT The audience must be physically comfortable for the duration of the ceremony. An outdoor wedding planned for a late Spring or early Fall day, which turns out to be 10-12 degrees or drizzling will mentally remove your guests. By the same token, a wedding taking place on a 30+ degree July day will achieve the exact same result. Exceptionally strong and persistent wind will also have a dominating effect upon your guests at a ceremony.

Your guests will get the maximum enjoyment at your wedding ceremony only when they are within a comfortable environment. The more comfortable an audience is, the more mentally present they will be for your ceremony.

NON-COMPETITIVE ENVIRONMENT Clearly the best environment for a wedding ceremony is a location with no audio or visual distraction. Nothing should compete with you for those 15 - 30 minutes. An audience will always turn its attention to the most entertaining or disruptive event within eye sight. When considering a setting for your ceremony, always ask yourself what will compete with you at that location? A non-competitive environment will place the audiences' attention completely on your ceremony. In the photo above, notice the power boat just off in the distance which made its appearance during the ceremony. To the right below is a cyclist who paused for several minutes, visually competing with the bridal couple, before determing that his passage through the covered bridge would continue to be obstructed for some time.

NOISE Although seldom anticipated by couples planning their ceremonies, noise can and will:

1. compete with the focus of your audience,
2. destroy the audio portion of your video taping, and
3. create a situation requiring the ceremony to stop.

Examples:

• Outdoor ceremonies held too close to large airports, roads, or railroad tracks.
• Indoor air-conditioning or heating units that decide to kick in mid way through your ceremony.
• Heavy equipment in the area backing up and having its sound punctuate the ceremony.
• Outdoor ceremonies when the ground keepers or next door neighbors start up their lawn mowers, their chain saws or their hammers. A neighbor's dog can be just as devastating.
• Auto rewind cameras that your guests have brought and which now begin whirring away as they rewind the film during your vows.
• Babies or small children who begin crying and their parents will not move them to the rear. Likewise, in the photo to the right, it ws the three children innocently playing in the background who voices penetrated elements of the ceremony.
• Cell phones.
• Banquet facilities that fail or forget to turn off their 'house music' during your ceremony.

Remember to ask yourselves... What can go wrong once my ceremony begins? Then have someone predesignated to move quickly to remove the threat.

RAIN If you are planning an outdoor ceremony you must have a backup plan for rain. Typically, couples having a large outdoor wedding and reception will have rented tents for that occasion. If it rains, the ceremony is moved under the canvas. Other couples, in the event of rain, will forgo the outdoor setting and have the ceremony at the waiting reception site. And yet some like the couple in the top photo above will persevere in spite of the rain after making a quick trip to a dollar store for some additional umbrellas. Whatever your plans might be, if you're having an outdoor wedding ceremony, you must make plans for what you're going to do if it rains.