A Beach Wedding in Your Backyard

With summer and summer weddings in full swing, I’ve been trying to plan my life more around ‘save the dates’ then around my everyday work. I’ve been to some really great and some really weird summer weddings but there’s one that really stands out and I’m sharing the idea here for anyone crazy about the beach.

My friend (who got married last year) had always dreamed of a beach wedding and had everything set for a Florida beach ceremony when her flight was cancelled because there was a hurricane warning. Needless to say it was extremely last minute and she couldn’t so much as find a caterer in the time she had left. Her family really pulled through to give her, her dream wedding… in the backyard!

They pulled about a million strings (with time being so short) and managed to find construction sand, lots of it and had the entire backyard covered in it (after placing a tarpaulin under it). It was pretty convincing. What they needed next was the sea and that actually proved more difficult than the sand. They fiddled with using a large kids pool but it wasn’t convincing and the sand kept spilling into it. Instead they got some old foam (one with lots of holes and stuff) and painted a nice sea rock color and set up a waterfall with the help of an extremely handy local plumber, they added the painted foam rocks for effect. The aisles were outlined with wine bottles and instead of chairs; they used huge cushions, picnic umbrellas and beach towels to seat the guests.

The whole thing was encircled with candles that were sunk in the sand and the archway where the couple was to marry was made out of more foamy props to look like moss covered stone. It was then covered with different shape and sized shells and pieces of glass that had been rounded off.

The end result was a very happy bride and a beautiful wedding! They managed to find a caterer after all but had to bake the cake themselves.