Are You Prepared for the Weather?

Photo by Peter Coombs.

Here is something I always tell my clients:  If you are planning an outdoor celebration and you have a good, solid rain plan, you won’t need it.  But if you don’t have a plan, that’s when the trouble starts.  I had this truth illustrated to me again just this summer.

There were two very similar weddings at opposite ends of the summer.  Both were small weddings with ceremonies planned for the Shakespeare Garden in Evanston, followed by a reception at the Orrington Hotel.

Next to the Shakespeare Garden is a lovely small chapel.  To reserve it costs a couple of hundred dollars.  My clients early in the summer decided that they would save the money and just hope that the weather was good on the day of their wedding.  That turned out to be a mistake.

The day of the wedding was not only rainy but also cold and windy.  Up until the last moment, they hoped to have the ceremony outdoors, but the weather was too bad.  This left me calling the hotel catering manager the night before to see if they could accommodate the ceremony somewhere in the hotel.  Fortunately, the hotel staff at the Orrington is terrific.  They said the ceremony could be on the 9th floor terrace if the weather was good at the ceremony time, or they would find us a place indoors if necessary.

Thirty minutes before the ceremony, the weather still looked threatening.  I decided that even if the weather held, it would not be comfortable for the guests to sit out in it wondering all the time if they would be poured on.  After I persuaded my clients of this, the catering manager, my assistant, and I had only about 30 minutes to set up the furniture for the ceremony in the wide hallway near the reception room.  It actually turned out looking lovely and as if we had planned it that way all along, but it was not the smoothest ceremony set-up I’ve ever seen.  And the sky opened up and it poured as the ceremony was starting.

I related this experience to my client later in the summer.  She took it to heart.  She also did not care to spend the money to rent the chapel, but she did have enough foresight to check with the hotel in advance to reserve a back-up room for an indoor ceremony if it was needed.  Sure enough, the weather the day of her wedding was perfect for an outdoor ceremony, and it was held in the garden, as planned.

It never fails:  If you have a rain plan, you won’t need it.  But watch out if you don’t!