Wedding Vows & Ceremony Discussions

Has anyone gotten married right after sunset?

Hello – The wedding venue we’re looking at is in the Philadelphia area and our date would be 10/13/18. We can’t start the ceremony until 6:30pm because it’s a museum and open until 6pm. Sunset on that day is at 6:25pm. I’m worried we’ll basically be getting married in the dark because we are doing a fully outdoor wedding! I know there will be some twilight time, my guess is 30 minutes, but I’m not sure how ideal that is either. When I google sunset wedding I get mostly beach pictures, but the location is inland so I can’t really tell how crazy this is of a plan?! The other date options are in September but then we lose the color of the fall leaves and there is a higher chance of rain.

Has anyone gotten married directly after sunset? Any advice?

Thanks in advance!


Re: Has anyone gotten married right after sunset?

  • I agree with PPs that there is a lot of factors up in the air and I would look at moving it inside. You could provide enough lighting to make sure everyone can see and you could have it when it doesn't drop to be to cold (or provide heaters) but those things would stress me out while planning and I would not want to deal with those factors. Also, depending on where you are their may be more bugs to deal with if you have significant lighting around your area. 
    image


  • I think you need to move this inside. An outdoor wedding in October after sunset honestly sounds cold. I live in the NY metro area so I'm familiar with the temperatures. It could easily be 50 degrees at the date and time. Don't do this to your guests. 


    Yeah I went to exactly this wedding last year. Even though it was a beautiful sunny 70 degree day by the time the ceremony ended it was dark and cold. 
  • Obviously inside will be your plan B in case of rain, extreme temps, humidity, bugs, etc.... 

    But it might be really cool (if the museum would allow it and if you have the budget) to add string lights, curtain lights, landscaping uplighting, and aisle lights. So your ceremony starts basically as it's getting dark (6:30) and the lights provide ambiance and adequate lighting when the ceremony ends. 

    The fallback to this is that lighting is expensive and timely to set up. The museum may not even allow it. And even if they do, you may have to move the ceremony inside anyway due to weather. 

    Here's what I'm thinking:
    Image result for outdoor night wedding
    Ao ar livre  noite tambm pode E fica o mximo
    Image result for wedding aisle lanterns night ceremony
    (obviously use flameless candles or bulb lanterns for aisle lighting)
    These pictures are beautiful. Make sure if you do go this route to speak with your photographer/videographer as they may have to bring different equipment to make sure they don't get a bunch of backlit/poorly lit pictures. 


    Has the museum had an event like this before? Can they provide any guidance or give you references from prior couples that can share what they did? 
    image
  • Thank you, everyone!! We convinced the venue to let us do the ceremony at 6pm, giving us 25 minutes until sunset. After reading your posts though I'm pretty worried about the temperature! Ugh- getting fall ambiance and outdoors seems basically impossible!
  • Also, yes, they will let us use lighitng. They actually require we light the area for the ceremony and reception (different sites). So we would likely do string lighting at both sites and just a ton of candles on tables. We also have heaters on hold.
  • STARMOON44STARMOON44 member
    First Comment First Answer 5 Love Its Name Dropper
    edited July 2017
    Wait the reception is outside? There's a really high likelihood it's going to be much too cold for that. With or without heaters. I think you can pull off a quick ceremony outside but not the whole reception. 
  • Also, yes, they will let us use lighitng. They actually require we light the area for the ceremony and reception (different sites). So we would likely do string lighting at both sites and just a ton of candles on tables. We also have heaters on hold.
    I think the ceremony outside might be OK, if it's not too cold. But I think it's a terrible idea to have the reception outside. Do you expect everyone to eat and dance in their coats?? Even with heaters, you're not going to be able to keep everyone warm. 

    There's a slight chance you might get a warm day. I got married on 9/27 and it was almost 75 degrees. But once the sun goes down in late September/early-mid October, it does get cold. 
  • Also, yes, they will let us use lighitng. They actually require we light the area for the ceremony and reception (different sites). So we would likely do string lighting at both sites and just a ton of candles on tables. We also have heaters on hold.
    I think the ceremony outside might be OK, if it's not too cold. But I think it's a terrible idea to have the reception outside. Do you expect everyone to eat and dance in their coats?? Even with heaters, you're not going to be able to keep everyone warm. 

    There's a slight chance you might get a warm day. I got married on 9/27 and it was almost 75 degrees. But once the sun goes down in late September/early-mid October, it does get cold. 
    I posted about my cousins wedding here before. It was in mid-late September in a similar climate and it was entirely outside. And it was fucking cold. Luckily we brought our coats in the car so we got them and were sitting in our seats, shivering, just waiting until we could sneak out without drawing attention to ourselves. We were not the only ones.

    Our food was cold, our drinks were cold (even hot once like coffee and tea), we were just all around cold. We stopped at McDonald's on our way home because we were so hungry from not eating the cold food.

    Ceremony outside is one thing, but you really need to get an entirely outdoor wedding out of your hear in this area of the world at that time. Unless you want your event to end much earlier than you'd planned because people leave when they get too cold.
  • Just wanted to add that if you do have an outdoor ceremony, make sure to work with the museum to have a plan B in case of inclement weather.
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