Step Guide to Having a Marquee Wedding at Home
Having a marquee wedding at home is very personal and intimate. But a home garden or external field wasn’t designed to host a wedding – so here’s our 15 step guide to making your marquee wedding at home the very best decision you made for your big day!
The size of your wedding guest list may mean that some of the below points are not quite as important as others. It goes without saying 50 person wedding requires far less infrastructure than a 150 guest wedding.
This guide is designed for 100 guest weddings and above to give you an idea of what infrastructure you need to think about for larger weddings.
If you’re unsure what you may need for your wedding at home then please do get in touch with me at [email protected]
1. Itinerary Planning
Getting a foundational level itinerary of the whole day as early as you can will enable you to break down the day as a whole and work out what suppliers you need and when.
Heads up, most weddings never stick to the tight itinerary timings so be generous with timings – herding 150 people from one space to another is never a 5 minute thing!
Excel is your best friend with this one – Use a spreadsheet to build a rough itinerary which can have your front end itinerary (what your guests see) what needs to happen in the background, supplier timings and your wet weather plan B contingencies on it etc
Your itinerary will then allow you to determine what suppliers you require for your big day. Your marquee hire supplier and your caterer are your first big things you need to arrange as early as you can for your wedding at home. Next comes the wedding band or DJ.
Other suppliers such as florists, bar hire, wedding cars etc will need to be organised further down the line and aren’t as important to organise ASAP.
2. Inside & Outside Space
Think about whether you would like to utilise your house as an integral part of your day. After all one of the best points of having a wedding at home is the intimacy and how personal it will feel having your reception at home.
Your home may have some wonderful backdrops for some photos. Perhaps it’s the outside that draws you into having your reception at home. Think about where your big wedding photo will be held and making sure there is enough space for your entire guest list to fit in.
You will also need to reserve some space for make up artists & hair stylists. Make sure these rooms have plenty of natural daylight with good access to sockets & extension leads – as they will need a fair few…remember your upstairs bedroom isn’t a salon, the closest you can replicate a salon environment the better! Get as many mirrors as you can too!
3. Weather Plan
Like any wedding – you will need a Plan A and a Plan B in case the weather isn’t on your side. If you are planning to have your ceremony or initial drinks reception outside that’s wonderful, however make sure you have a contingency plan in place in case it’s raining.
Most receptions at home will require some form of outside cover (it’s Britain after all!) – speaking to your marquee hire company to explain you may need to utilise some of the marquee for covered reception space is advised.
4. Your Outside Ceremony
Talk to your marquee supplier about a wet weather plan B. The marquee may have to be extended to hold the ceremony or arrival drinks reception if that’s the case. We often recommend the roofs/gable end of a marquee with transparent roofs and no walls provides the same outside feel but it will keep guests dry.
If your event is in peak season it’s unlikely your marquee hire company will have the stock to add on some extra marquee space last minute – so you may have to book this well in advance.
You could have your ceremony or drinks reception under transparent roofs to give you the outside feel should the weather be wet.
5. Marquee/Cover
Your marquee hire company will be crucial in how successful your big day will be. You will rely on them more often than you think – so choosing the right one is paramount.
Check their reviews (on sites such as Google, or Tripadvisor – the sites beyond the Company owner’s control) to see how well loved & experienced they are with weddings. Check case studies & their instagram feeds to see the quality of their work and how experienced they are working with weddings at home.
Having a marquee installed for a wedding reception at home is completely different to installing one at a venue (where everything is already set up) – make sure they have the experience to help guide you.
A marquee hire company worth their salt will offer a free site visit to check your plans will work logistically. Most marquee companies will bring in additional infrastructure such as generators, toilets & furniture – so making sure you find a company you feel they understand what you want your tastes are is critical. Ask if they will meet you on site, so you can meet them in person and see if you could easily work with that person. There will be a lot of communication between yourself and your marquee hire supplier. It’s likely the will be bringing in a lot of equipment for your wedding so it’s important you feel comfortable with them, get along with them and trust they will deliver what they have promised.
Lean on them, they will be the glue that holds your wedding together – use their wealth of experience to ensure you don’t make any mistakes as they should have completed hundreds of successful home based weddings before…and you haven’t!
Have your marquee hire company liaise with your caterer to ensure the caterer has everything they need that the marquee hire company will be providing (catering tent, tables, power etc)
Some marquee hire companies make their quotes sound very complicated – make sure you know what you are getting and what’s included. We also suggest to hire 5% more chairs than needed as some guests end up using them to hang their coats on which makes things difficult if you’ve only got the exact amount of chairs.
Ask your marquee hire company to provide an overhead CAD plan too – so you can visualise how much space you will have to ensure you’ve got the right size. Let your marquee hire company know well in advance anything else you are planing on bringing in the marquee, so they can work out what size marquee is best for your wedding.
Asking your marquee hire company for a CAD plan for larger scaled weddings will help you visualise how much space you will have
6. Caterers
Your caterer – much like your marquee supplier is also very important to get right. You’ll need to find someone with again, a wealth of experience dealing with catering in a non-perfect environment.
A good caterer will be bringing in a lot of infrastructure too such as dinnerware, kitchen equipment and the serving staff.
We always find it’s a great idea to introduce your caterer & marquee hire supplier as early as you can so they can have conversations to who is bringing what so no stone is left unturned. Try to arrange a site visit once you’ve found your ideal caterer and marquee supplier so they can meet you at your home and you can go through the itinerary and they can work out the logistical details together.
These two suppliers will be your most important pair to enable your big day to be a success!
Have your caterer some round for a site visit too – this is absolutely essential at quoting stage. They may find in order to prepare the meals you’d like, your kitchen will more than likely not be suitable and an external ‘field kitchen’ may be needed which of course will add to the cost.
This is usually a smaller separate marquee, connected to your main marquee with hired in kitchen equipment. Usually for guest lists higher than 60 guests this will be mandatory. I would allocate an additional £1000 for both the external marquee and the field kitchen set up (hot ovens, plate warmers etc)
Unless you are bringing in a mobile bar company to run the bar, set aside some budget for fridges/freezers for both the caterer and the bar set up, and most likely a freezer for ice.
If you are going to be bringing in the bar yourself, or via your marquee hire company, for larger events, particularly in the summer, it would be prudent to order a chiller trailer (a huge fridge on a trailer) to keep drinks, food (and the wedding cake!) cool. Allow £750-£900 for some fridges, freezer full of ice & a chiller trailer to ensure your catering & bar set up is complete.
For more informal style weddings food trucks are a super popular choice. They are usually far more cost effective if this is the feel and style you’d like. They’re usually a popular option with more festivals style weddings.
They will need a space usually on your driveway if they cannot gain vehicle access into your garden and some power set up there.
Food trucks are also a unique option for food in the evening too. They don’t require any extra infrastructure including external catering tents etc.
Separate catering tents by the “backstage area” is sometimes required when you are having your marquee in a field or a long distance away from a kitchen.
7. Bar
Some would say this is the most important aspect to any wedding! So let’s make sure we get this right.
You have two main choices with regards to running the bar for your wedding at home:
1) Get a mobile bar hire company in
- Pros: No effort on your part. More alcohol choices & draught beers etc
- They bring in all infrastructure require to run the bar
- Cons: You will be paying typical pub prices per drink. Will be expensive if you are covering the bar bill yourself. Generally most mobile bar companies tend to have quite old, dingy looking bar set ups
2) Organise the Bar “Yourself”
- Pros: Can have a bar design exactly how you’d like it – different bar design choices. Drinks will be far cheaper as you’re sourcing yourself from supermarket, Majestic, Costco etc
- Cons: Little more work on your side to order the alcohol. Also need to organise bars, fridges, chiller trailers, bar staff, glass hire etc (Between your marquee hire company & your caterer you can organise this quite easily!)
Running a bar from your wedding at home can be a lot more simple than you think. Again, your caterer & marquee hire supplier can bring in all the infrastructure necessary to run a bar at home. Your marquee hire company brings in the bars, fridges etc whilst your caterer can help with glassware and bar staff.
It’s way more cost effective than bringing in an external bar hire company to do this.
Providing a Free Bar
If you are providing a free bar for your guests then you do not have to apply for an alcohol licence. Top tip – Make sure you over order on glassware…the worst thing for a bar is to run out of clean glasses. Guests have an annoying habit of leaving an empty glass somewhere and asking for a fresh one. Glasses tend to be around 20p per glass, so it’s not going to break to bank to slightly over order. Your caterer can help you with glassware so you can give that job to them.
Also check to see if Majestic Wines still offer free glassier if you order the alcohol with them – at the time of writing this was still the case. So you get a pretty good saving there!
We always suggest to keep the bar as tight as you can in terms of available choices. Your guests know it’s a wedding in a field/home and you don’t have a pub attached in your back garden.
Stick to one beer, one wine of each type and perhaps 3-5 spirits so you don’t have too many half used bottled after the event. Most supermarkets work on a sale and return basis so don’t be afraid of over ordering as you can send it back after your wedding. They also now deliver too, so in terms of the extra effort compared to a mobile bar…there’s not that much more effort and your bar bill will be half the price compared to bringing in a mobile bar company.
Providing a Pay Bar
A lot of our clients ask us to provide a pay bar for their wedding at home. You can actually make a small profit to contribute towards your wedding budget whilst maintaining cheaper than pub prices – so both you and your guests are happy too!
You just need to organise two things. 1) Tills (which is easy) and 2) a Temporary Events Notice.
If you are providing a pay bar and “selling” the alcohol you will need to apply for a Temporary Events Notice which costs around £10 from your local council. Make sure you do this in plenty of time as councils don’t tent to set records for fastest administrative tasks!
Working Out How Much Alcohol to Buy
This will be around an hour’s work for you – We always suggest to put your guest’s names on one axis of an excel spreadsheet, with your proposed drinks choices on the other axis. Then guess what each guest will drink from your drinks menu. Typically guests might have 6 drinks on average. Add up your total at the bottom and add 20% just in case. Remember you can send back any unopened alcohol after your event.
You’d just need to inform your guests in good time there is a pay bar which will be cash only. Organising card machines for a one-off event is a huge faff and quite expensive.
I have made a more detailed article about how to run a bar at home in our Knowledge Centre.
Marquee hire companies tend to have a more professional range of bars compared to mobile bar hire companies
8. Power
Most homes don’t have the power capacity to run a full scale wedding – especially if you are having a catering tent/field kitchen with extra hot plates & ovens etc. Running long extension leads to the site from your house over long distances are more likely to trip fuses.
If you have no power for your wedding, there simply is no wedding! Get a generator in to give you that peace of mind. Most marquee companies will be able to arrange this for you. Also speak to all of your wedding suppliers in advance and tell your marquee supplier where you need power (DJ/bands will tell you on their booking contract what power requirements they need – just send that, and any other requirements from your suppliers to your marquee hire company and they are then fully aware of where each socket needs to be within your marquee).
There’s nothing worse than forgetting your Photo Booth needs power and you’re frantically running back to your house for an extension lead. Give your marquee hire supplier plenty of notice so they know exactly where to provide power for you.
If your caterer isn’t bringing any hot ovens and powerful electrical equipment in it is very much possible to run your wedding from just your mains electrics. The marquee with lighting and power for a band doesn’t really consume lots of power. Speak to your marquee hire company when they complete a site survey and they will be able to work out from your event requirements what the best option is for you.
Another bonus with a generator is they have boards like your fuse boards at home at various points around the marquee. So for example if your DJ plugs something in and trips the fuse the whole marquee doesn’t go dark – just their circuit. It’s the small things like this that give you the extra peace of mind that you have the very best power set up.
Some large weddings also have a backup generator. This is a secondary generator that kicks in automatically should the first one fail. Having a generator fail is extremely rare, but they are mechanical – so it could happen. This does tend to add another £300-£400 of cost of hiring a generator. It’s quite rare we offer back up generators due to the solid reliability of well serviced generators however some would like the peace of mind.
Budget: Budget around £850-£1000 for a generator, delivery, fuel and all the cabling distribution. Some marquee hire companies will also bill you for the fuel used after, which in our eyes is a bit sneaky. So check fuel is included and if not, and what price you’re paying per litre of diesel.
Note generators aren’t allowed to use tax free red diesel anymore thanks to HMRC. Most generators have a 200l tank and you’ll be paying fuel pump prices for this.
I have made a separate article about whether your event needs a generator here
9. Toilets
The rule is for every 45 guests there needs to be a toilet. So for a 120 person wedding you’re going to need 3 loo’s.
Your marquee hire supplier will be able to arrange this for you – but ask them for images of their supplier’s loos. Luxury toilets trailers come in different styles and ages. Making sure your loo’s are presentable, clean and the ladies have good lighting & mirrors to freshen up is key.
They take up a space of a long van, and if you have no car access into your garden/field will usually be placed on your front driveway.
Toilets can also be discreetly be installed inside your marquee too. They are usually set up in a way where guests cannot see them directly, and you access them via an internal door. This does add up to the marquee hire cost but if you’re worried about guests getting wet when popping to the loo, it’s a great idea. This is particularly recommend for winter based weddings where it’s more likely the weather may be more cold & wet.
If you have a large garden, make sure you have plenty of signs to where the loo’s are if they’re not in an obvious location – it’s your big day and the last thing you want is to be telling your guests on arrival where they are!
these luxury toilet trailers do require you to walk up 3 steps. So if you have anybody disabled or very old that will struggle to get up the steps, you can order a disabled plastic toilet too. This might not be needed if your house is relatively close to the marquee and anyone less able could use your house toilets.
Toilets can event go inside the marquee if required – usually hidden with a false wall with entrance door
10. Event Planner
If you were having your wedding at a venue – most venues usually provide you a wedding planner. They bring all of the suppliers together and arrange everything for you. They let you become a guest of your own wedding, rather than being a host.
Now you could give this job to a trusted friend – but in my opinion unless they have lots of previous experience themselves it will be the best money you’ll ever spend by getting a wedding planner.
Find a wedding planner who has lots of experience with dealing with home based weddings. There will be so many small things they will make sure they have thought about that you simply wouldn’t have – they will be worth their weight in gold.
A good wedding planner will be there on the day, making sure all guests & suppliers stick to the itinerary. The last thing you need is to have your head bridesmaid direct the band in tell them and where the sockets are – you’re all there to celebrate your big day. Leave these logistical jobs to someone external who will be a vital helping hand throughout the day.
Even if you hired one to just be there on the day if your budget is all spent – they will be invaluable.
At Abacus we do have this service in house – so if you would like us to have a conversation about this with you then please get in touch and we can explain in more detail what we can do to make organising your wedding as stress free as possible.
This is particularly useful when you do have generators & toilets there – it’s the extra peace of mind you have someone there, with experience of generators and toilets on hand should anything untoward happen.
An on the day event coordinator will allow you and your bridesmaids to be a guest of your wedding rather than the host.
11. Parking
Having a 100 guest wedding might require 30-40 parking spaces. You’ll need to plan where everybody can park.
If you’re having your marquee in a field with cars close by you may want to consider lighting the area leading back to the car park with some festoon lighting. It will be dark by midnight when guests are leaving and a guiding light for the guests who have spent the last two hours by the bar would be helpful!
When you have your parking plan in place make sure it’s mentioned on the wedding invites. Perhaps advise to try and car share to limit cars on site. This is especially important if you’re having your wedding at home where the driveway may have space for 6-8 cars but not 40!
Organising buses to nearby hotels would also be a fab idea – which will avoid a row of taxis going to the same destination. Perhaps speaking to hotels would also be a good idea to offer suggestions as they may be able to offer this service themselves.
12. Entertainment
If you’re thinking of bringing in a band – they’re a brilliant way to get everybody up dancing. Just remember bands tend to play 45 minute sets with breaks in between. You don’t want to lose that momentum, so you’ll likely need a DJ too. So make sure you budget for that. You could go for a speaker & playlist to fill in the gaps but that is quite a compromise to an experienced wedding DJ.
Some proactive bands have thought of this and one of the band member also DJ’s in between sets. Much better than having a playlist in between sets which kills the vibe instantly.
We know an awesome wedding band who one of the band member’s is a DJ too – which solves your problem perfectly! Get in touch with us and we can point you in the right direction.
Check the “rider” your band will give you – which is essentially a list of requirements your band will ask for. This may include things such as they would like to be fed, they require a certain size stage or they require a green room).
If your marquee is going in the middle of a field the band may request a green room. A place for the band to hang out in when not playing which is also their changing room. We tend to build a green room by extending the catering tent and putting a wall in between so the band have their own private space. Other bands are quite happy sitting in their cars they arrived it – it really does depend on the band you’re bringing in! If they do want a green room, this will increase your costs so it’s best to find these things out quickly.
The band will more than likely request to be fed too (I know right!) – so check with your caterer they have provided something for them. It doesn’t have to be your 3 course meal your guests will be enjoying, keep it cost effective.
Your wedding DJ will be invaluable to helping you stick to the itinerary for the day. Take a look at why hiring the right DJ is important here.
They will run your itinerary for you from the point where speeches will start. Your DJ will more than likely be able to provide you with wireless mics and use their speaker system for speeches if required. Ask your band/DJ well in advance, as they will need this set up for you during speeches at your wedding breakfast – so it’s likely the band/DJ will need to arrive earlier than planned in order for them to do this.
13. Cleaning
You’ll need a team of post party cleaners. Whether they are hired friends the next day or a professional team to come in, clean & and take the rubbish away.
We always advise to have plenty of bins around to the clearing up the next day isn’t quite as bad as first thought.
Majestic offer free bins with alcohol orders or Jaspers Hire in Luton also hire out big bins with wheels to easily take away empty bottles from the bar. A good marquee hire company with experience if they are bringing in the bar equipment should also be including these sorts of things too!
Caterers are usually responsible for taking away their own rubbish they create throughout the day. Perhaps double check with them this is the case. If you’re running the bar yourself you’re going to have a lot of empty bottles etc to get rid of. A 100+ person wedding will require a van load of rubbish so if you don’t have access to a van it might be an idea to hire one for the day! Have different coloured bin bags for different types of rubbish so it can be easily identified when you’re recycling.
The bar staff should be clearing away empty glasses etc throughout the evening so the clean up operation the next day is manageable (even on a hangover)
We do offer within out Level 2 Event Management service a completely done for you service including rubbish removal – highly recommended for a zero effort wedding!
14. House & Garden Prep
Have some helping hands the week prior to the wedding to have your house and the area the marquee is going in, in tip top condition. Obviously if you’re planning any work to your house & gardens then get this prepped well in advance.
Your marquee supplier will want full use of your ground from the Wed/Thur onwards so make sure you’re ahead of schedule and not in their way.
15. Timings
Large 150+ weddings are typically a 2 day build for marquee hire companies (they are essentially building a temporary building). With that in mind, if you would like time to complete any setting up yourself, or perhaps you have florists coming in etc, it’s advisable to ask your marquee supplier to start the build on the Wednesday, they are off site on Thursday to give you the whole of Friday for other suppliers.
Depending on how early you book this might not be possible due to other events the marquee hire company has committed to. Double check when the marquee hire company expects to be completed and communicate well with other suppliers such as florists well in advance so they know when they can come in to complete the marquee finish. Remember during peak season your external suppliers such as florists will have more than one wedding to complete every time – communicating with them well in advance on timings is paramount.
Summer time is always a very inflexible time for any event supplier so give them as much notice with everything as you can!
Having a marquee wedding at home might feel a bit daunting. If you’re feeling a little list and unsure where to start then please send me an email to [email protected] and I’ll be delighted to help you! Hope you enjoyed reading our 15 Step Guide to Having a Marquee Wedding at Home
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