Outdoor August 2012 Wedding

Shaundra3

Hi, this is my first post, I love this website! 
Our wedding is set for August 2012 at our home outside.  We are planning for a bbq and bonfire.  Just wondering if anyone is doing the same thing and would share some ideas?  Where I am stuck the most is food and music. 

Thanks!

Avion22

When you say BBQ, do you mean like southern-style pulled pork, texas brisket, ribs, etc?  Or do you mean hamburgers, hotdogs, chicken, etc?  I ask because BBQ has different meanings depending on what part of the country you're in.

If you have it in your budget, you can see if a local restaraunt will cater for you.  This will be the easiest in that nobody will have to worry about cooking anything.   A lot of places will cater, so if you have a favorite restaraunt (BBQ, mexican, thai, whatever) call and ask.  You might be surprised at how reasonable the prices are. 

If you don't have it in your budget to cater, then you'll end up cooking (or someone will).   If you want to grill, you can purchase the meat ahead of time and ask a friend to be the "grillmaster."   You can also prepare a lot of things ahead of time and then just set it out.

For music, you can do something simple like hooking your ipod up to speakers and letting it run on a playlist.  Or you could look at hiring musicians, like a bluegrass band, string quartet, harpist, piano player, whatever you want. 

dnowlan99

Hi! 

This is my first post too : ) My fiance and I are holding our wedding/reception in my parent's big backyard. We were thinking of have a caterer bring in bbq-esque food. Are you renting a tent? We are looking into a tent with sides and also renting large fans in case it's warm. For music, we are going to create our own i-tunes playlist and have a friend-of-a-friend play dj/emcee for the night. Also-I don't know how big your wedding is-but ours is about 150 and we're having a day-after celebration with friends of our parents. The problem is they have a septic system-so we are also looking into renting luxury porta-potties. 

Wendt65451

This is so exiting! We are also having an outdoor august 2012 wedding on a lake side with BBQ! Still so long to go and caint wait for the big day!

ABeautifulMind

We are holding our reception at a private home (not ours) on the coast of Maine.  We've rented out the house for the week and have to plan everything ourselves.  It has been fun, but LOTS of work.  Food has definitely been the biggest challenge thus far.  We contacted a bunch of caterers and finally found one that met our all of our criteria.  We have a meeting with them in a few weeks.  Fingers crossed it goes well!
My advice is to check your local board for caterers and music recs.  then just starting making calls!  Good luck and welcome!

Shaundra3

To answer questions....yes we are renting a tent and we are having about 70 people.  Our back up plan at the moment is to get married under the tent rather than under a tree as planned on our lot, it means so much to us to get married at our home so there is no other option to go elsewhere.  We are also renting porta potties.  And my thoughts of a BBQ is chicken or beef with salads and all the fixings.  Also thanks for all of the thoughts!  Yes it does feel like a long time away!